Universal
by Shadow's Forge
Summary: The universe has changed, as has the life of one Sayaka Miki. Follow her as she adjusts to her new life and rises to fit alongside friends new and old against horrors not even the Incubators have envisioned.
1. Glossary & Dramatis Personae

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**GLOSSARY**

**Existence**: A formal name given to the transcendental, nigh-omnipotent, and nigh-omniscient entities born from an Incubator's contract. Examples: Madoka Kaname (the Lady of Aspirant Radiance); Keltev Srroon'del (the Lord Of Sunlit Night)

**Xori'an**: The race from which beings such as the Lord Of Sunlit Night and Janev Ssree'ten are derived. Likened to large bipedal ferrets.

* * *

**DRAMATIS PERSONAE**

**d'Arc, Joan**: A transcended human female. Also know as Joan of Arc. Friend of Sayaka Miki.

**Kaname, Madoka**: The original human identity of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance

**Lady Of Aspirant Radiance**: The Existence of hope for all contractors past, present, and future. Also see Kaname, Madoka

**Lady Of Infinite Helix**: The Existence of life for all contractors past, present, and future

**Lord Of Fire Between**: The Existence of life for all sentient beings past, present, and future.

**Lord Of Sunlit Night**: The Existence of redemption for all contractors past, present, and future. Also see Srroon'del, Keltev

**Lord Of Unsung Sorrow**: The Existence of remembrance for all contractors past, present, and future.

**Miki, Sayaka**: A transcended human female. Close friend and confidante of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance

**Rahkanael**: Close friend and confidant of the Lady Of Infinite Helix

**Srroon'del, Keltev**: The original Xori'an identity of the Lord Of Sunlit Night

**Ssree'ten, Janev**: A transcended Xori'an male. Close friend and confidant of the Lord Of Sunlit Night

**T!k!k**: Close friend and confidant of the Lord Of Unsung Sorrow

**Zeendahl**: The original identity of the Lady Of Infinite Helix


	2. Prologue: Visitor

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Prologue: Visitor**

* * *

"So, I always did wonder, what did you end up wishing for?" I asked.

The girl next to me continued to watch the stars for a few more moments before answering. She turned to me, smiling.

"I wished that I would be given the strength of body and will to see my country liberated from the English," Joan d'Arc said. She looked out at the stars again, eyes growing distant. "My wish was granted. Charles became king and led France out from under English control. We just had the Hundred Years War to counterbalance that. And, of course my appointment with a stake and a close brush with utter despair."

Joan turned again to look over the stars.

"And what was _your_ wish, Sayaka?" she asked me.

After hearing what Joan's wish was—and all the stuff that resulted from it—my wish felt kind of... silly. Petty.

I sighed. "There was a boy I liked. Kyousuke. Real good with the violin. Like, a prodigy. He was in a bad accident, basically lost the function in his hands. I wished that his hands be healed so that he could play again."

I left out the part where I hoped that I could, I don't know, snag him while he was in a good mood and happy with life.

Like I said, it sounded petty.

The other girl looked at me. "You hesitated a bit."

I looked at the ground. Which was really just emptiness filled with more stars, but heck. "While, yeah, I did want to see him play the violin again and be happy, but deep down I did hope that the wish would help us start a relationship together." I paused. "Not nearly as cool as your wish."

Joan didn't anything, just moved her hands. The view around us changed, focusing on a beautiful galaxy. I moved my own hands, and we zoomed in closer to a solar system orbited by nine planets. Well, eight. I think Pluto got knocked off the planet list not too long ago. A little closer and it would almost feel like we were walking on the sun.

"I'll be honest, too, Sayaka," Joan said to me. "I did genuinely want to see France free from England, but I also wanted to do something out of the ordinary. Have an adventure. I was just a poor farmgirl back then, so if I had to dress up in men's clothes and swing a sword while wearing plate armor, I could live with that." Joan grinned. "My intentions weren't as selfless and pure as you'd think."

I chuckled. "They made you a saint, or something, later on. Not sure with all the details. My friend Kyoko would have known."

The other girl scratched her head. "And I feel equal measures of honor and bemusement from that, I'll tell you. I never wanted to be... blessed like that."

"That's the thing," I said. "I think the ones who always become honored and stuff are the ones who were never looking for it in the first place. Like you and... well, you know. Her."

"Yes," Joan said simply. She made a sweeping gesture with one of her arms, and again the view shifted, this time to a nebula.

"Sayaka," Joan said.

"Hmm?"

"Don't diminish your wish. Don't think that because you didn't wish for the liberation of a country or to become a great hero that your wish becomes any less precious. We're all His creatures, each and everyone precious. To Him, a nation is no more and no less precious than Kyousuke was."

I remembered that Joan was a Christian. Or a Catholic. Or were Catholics Christians? Ugh. I can't keep any of that stuff straight. I swear I'd have to look it up if I was going to be keeping company with Joan of Arc so often.

But besides that, it did make me feel warm inside that one person didn't think of me as completely selfish. Two, if you believed in Joan's God.

I was just about to ask Joan to explain her religion (again) when I heard a knocking sound, which was just wrong. We weren't in any part of the physical universe anymore, so that was impossibility number one. Two, if we _were_, we were basically standing in vacuum in deep space.

I was thinking of number three when this... door seemed to open up in the nothingness. Like, swung open. It was a door textured like a field of stars, and beyond it was another field of stars. Ooh, headache.

"What's going on?" I whispered.

"I don't know, Sayaka," Joan said. "But I'm thinking we'd better dress to impress.

There was a flash of light, and Joan was no longer wearing her simple robe, but ornate battle armor, a sheathed sword strapped to her hip.

I reached down into myself, calling on the weird new energy that I possessed that seemed half magic and half cosmic, and called my own armor to replace the tee shirt and skirt I was wearing. It was similar to the old digs I had back on Earth, but just accessorized with a bit more armor. I had to thank Joan for the inspiration for that. My cutlass hadn't changed much.

Joan and I tensed up. I had no clue what was going to pop out of that doorway. Well, I was half-expecting a Witch, since opening up a door in space-that-was-not-space seemed like right up a Witch's alley. Yeah, yeah, there weren't any more Witches, but still that was the first thing I thought of.

So... my jaw kind of dropped when a very human-looking guy in a cloak and light armor stepped through.

He smiled brightly at us. "Good afternoon, ladies. My name is Janev Ssree'ten. I am an emissary who wishes to speak with your Lady."

I blinked. "Huh?"


	3. Chapter 1: Existence

**_UNIVERSAL_**

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Existence**

* * *

The stranger smiled. "I hope I got the right address. The directions were kind of vague. 'Turn left at this galaxy, then move a couple parsecs, then open a transdimensional gate. Should take you right there.' Nigh-omniscience doesn't help with his directions any, I swear."

With that, I was even more confused. This Ssree'ten guy looked to be a little older than me, but younger than Joan. (Which was kind of meaningless since we existed in a realm outside of the conventional timeline, but whatever). Maybe a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, pretty well muscled. Not bad looking, with short hair that was mostly black but had red streaks in it. His eyes matched those locks, I noticed.

Definitely not a Witch, which begged the question of what, exactly, he was.

"What do you want?" I heard myself ask.

"Janev Ssree'ten" just kept on grinning. "I am an emissary of the Existence I serve." I caught the emphasis he put on "Existence." "I humbly wish to meet with the Existence _you_ serve. May I speak with your Lady?"

Existence? Lady? Eh?

"Sayaka, I think she means—" Joan started to say.

"Me," a familiar voice said.

I canted me head to the left, and caught sight of my best friend standing by my shoulder.

Madoka Kaname.

Almost as soon as Madoka's words left her throat, Joan dropped to one kneed, inclining her head slightly. To my surprise, the Ssree'ten dude did the same, though I noticed his head was bowing even more deeply than Joan's.

Madoka stepped forward, and I saw she was doing her full goddess thing, with a flowing white gown and and a pair of rose-colored wings extending out to the sides. Her hair, pink and longer than I remember, flowed out behind her, drifting a bit as if an invisible wind was nudging it about.

It could almost look like she was cosplaying an elegant princess. Almost. You looked hard enough, and if you looked within the shadows of her gown and in her hair, you could see the stars of the universe reflected in those darkened areas. You could see the faint glow that seemed to surround her.

And one of the last things I noticed was that Madoka's features were identical to when she was just an eighth grader, my best friend. Plain, average Madoka. Kind, honest Madoka.

Madoka whom Hitomi thought I was going totally lesbo with this one day. Funny story behind that.

Despite all that, despite being (having been?) an average-looking girl, she was simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful. She was a bit shorter than I was, yet her presence seemed to be larger than that of the universe. She wasn't particularly intimidating, but I somehow sensed a vast power that could rewrite reality itself.

I almost genuflected myself, just because of all that majesty Madoka had going on. Yet I didn't. I don't know why. Hmm. I wondered if Madoka minded that.

"Please, rise, both of you," Madoka said softly. Ssree'ten and Joan rose to their feet.

"Janev Ssree'ten, what have you to say to me?" Madoka asked. There she went, all formal and stuff.

"Milady," Ssree'ten said formally, inclining his head briefly. Sheesh. His neck should be killing him. "I wish to extend a salutation from my master, the Lord Of Sunlit Night. He welcomes you and yours to this plane of existence, and wishes to request and audience with you at your convenience."

I expected Madoka to ask who the heck the Lord Of Sunlit Night was, but she didn't. All Madoka said was, "Inform your master that I thank him for his graciousness and that I will take his request under consideration."

"I will do so, my Lady," Ssree'ten said, bowing yet again. "And Milady, I must ask, how can I inform my Lord to address you?"

I saw Madoka pause, just for a slight second. "You may inform the Lord Of Sunlit Night that I am the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance."

* * *

Wow. I haven't heard Madoka identify herself like that before. Whenever we talked, she always answered to Madoka. Lady Of Aspirant Radiance was kind of a mouthful. That would take some getting used to.

"Very well, my Lady Of Aspirant Radiance," Ssree'ten said. "Thank you."

"Of course, Master Ssree'ten," Madoka answered. Then all at once, I detected a... shift in my friend. Somehow, I felt that she toned down the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance thing and was back to being Madoka. "Would you like to rest before you return to your master? Would you like something to eat or drink?"

One hundred percent Madoka.

For the first time since Madoka appeared, Ssree'ten grinned. "Any hospitality you would offer me would be most welcome, Milady."

"Very well," I heard Madoka reply. She spread her arms, and, just like that, we found ourselves in a massive throne room-looking place with massive white granite pillars and rose hedges. Ah, this place. Home. Madoka had created it a month ago just by waving her hands, and could summon it anywhere with a gesture. Loads of cool.

Madoka turned to Joan. "Joan, please inform the others. Be sure to spread the word to those who are in other areas observing the other dimensions."

"I will do so, Milady," Joan said, genuflecting. She gave a respectful nod to Ssree'ten, and a smile to me. "I'll see you, Sayaka."

"Anytime," I replied as Joan left through one of the doors set in the walls.

"Sayaka," Madoka said to me, "please show Master Ssree'ten to a guest room, and then to an area where he may eat."

"You got it," I said to my friend. Madoka smiled at me, then disappeared. No flash of light, not fading out, nope. Just gone, just like that. I think if I was still a human I would've found it creepy. Now it was just business as usual.

"Well," I said, turning to face Ssree'ten, "let's get you to a room, then."

I turned towards one of the door, and I sensed Ssree'ten fall into step behind me. I gestured to one of the doors, and it swung open to admit us. We stepped into a hallway.

Just like a lot of things in this extrauniversal place, this castle that Madoka had called into existence didn't follow normal rules. If I had to get somewhere fast, my destination would just be right around the corner. If I wanted some time to myself to think, or whatever the path would be long and winding. I think long and winding could work here. I wanted to ask this guy a _lot_ of things.

"So, er, Ssree'ten—"

"You know you have me at a disadvantage, right?" he said to me. His tone was humorous and informal again, not like when he'd been talking to Madoka. Or the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance. I really had to ask Madoka about that title.

"Huh, what?"

"You know my name, but I do not know yours, Mistress.

Mistress? Really? Yech. "My name is Sayaka Miki."

"Nice name. Pleasure to meet you, Mistress Miki."

Gah. "Aaand you can stop doing that," I said, exasperated.

"Doing what?"

"The 'Mistress' thing. I wasn't a formal girl back on Earth, and I'm not going to be starting now. Even here in magical girl heaven, or whatever you want to define this place as."

"Fair enough. In exchange, though, I'll just go by Janev. I wasn't a formal guy either, if you couldn't tell."

I snorted. Definitely the joker type. "I kind of got the idea."

"Cool."

We continued walking as I thought of questions. I hope this guy didn't mind.

"Um... I never knew there were magical boys," I said. Lamely. Yeesh.

"Not on Earth, no," Janev said. "I'm not from around there, though."

I cocked an eyebrow. "You look human."

"True. That's because I'm choosing this form while I'm in realm of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance. My species look like giant walking, talking ferrets who liked capes as a fashion statement."

Huh. Interesting. "Then doesn't it feel weird walking around like a human?"

Janev shrugged. "Not really. Remember, you and I aren't exactly limited to the regular universal laws anymore. Out power is almost infinitely lesser than one of the Existences, but doing something like changing our appearance isn't hard at all."

Which led to another question. "You said 'you and I.' Meaning what?"

"I'm just like you, Sayaka. A formally mortal being who has transcended into something much more. Phenomenal cosmic power and all that noise."

"I really don't feel all _that_ powerful," I said skeptically.

"Well, yeah. You're living under the shadow of an Existence. Anything that isn't another Existence will feel like a bug. A tiny, tiny bug."

"I... don't feel like a bug, either."

Janev laughed. "You feel like you could make a planet disappear?"

Uh... what? Non-sequitur much? "Not really, no."

"Because you can, if you don't mind bending and breaking a couple of rules. Hence, why you feel like a bug but subconsciously ignore it. We have a lot of power, at least from a mortal standpoint, but we feel like a plain old person because we're so overshadowed."

Oy. Really? I looked down at my hand. Break a planet? Madoka had told me that Incubator had believed Madoka's Witch to be able to do just that. Freaky. I hadn't been around to see it. Kind of glad I hadn't, too.

"You keep throwing the word 'Existence', with a capital E, around. Mind explaining it?"

"Hard to explain. The best I can do is point out an Existence we already know, like the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance. A universal constant. Nigh-omnipotence, and nigh-omniscience. I remember when she rewrote the laws of the universe concerning the Witches."

I jerked, surprised. "You know about that?"

"Oh, yeah. Saw all the pink arrows going out to save all the girls before they could become corrupted. It was beautiful and magnificent." Janev chuckled. "I haven't been in the presence of an Existence other than Keltev for such a long time that I sometimes forget how truly powerful they are."

"Who's the Lord Of Sunlit Night?" I asked, then blinked. "Wait, I meant to say the Lord Of Sunlit Night." Oh, dang. "Why can't I say the Lord Of Sunlit Night?"

Janev laughed. "Keltev is the Lord Of Sunlit Night, as you can tell, and a close friend of mine.

"That was _weird._ Why couldn't I say his name?"

"Think bigger, Sayaka. _Existence_. Big metaphysical deal. Keltev _is_ the Lord Of Sunlit Night. The Lord Of Sunlit Night _is_ Keltev. Like how Lady Radiance _is_ someone."

I blinked. "But I can say Madoka's name just fine."

"Lady Of Aspirant Radiance?" It was Janev's turn to blink. "Whoa. I haven't done that in a while." He shook his head. "And before you can ask, it's usually the ones closest to the Existence—or other Existences themselves, I think—who can say their old mortal name without invoking their title. We can also sort of cheat and abbreviate the title, like I used Lady Radiance. You can call Keltev by Lord Night, I think.

"Lord Night," I said. Ah-hah, it worked. "Okay, last question."

"Shoot."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

Janev smiled. "I've been in this plane for a couple of millennia, so I've picked up things. It'll make more sense after a couple of decades."

"Wait you're _how_ old?"

"Technically, I would be... equivalent to sixteen according to human reckoning. Of course, after my big transcendental event, time stopped mattering."

"Right," I said, a little dazed. I'd learned more in these past few minutes than I'd known since the two months when Madoka had brought me to this plane. And I'd learned it from a sixteen-year-old guy who claimed to be a several thousand years old and a giant ferret. I was going to need to sleep on this.

We turned a corner, and, just like that, we found ourselves in a hallway lined with doors. The guest area. In hindsight, I wonder why Madoka had created a guest area. The magical girls had their own living areas already. Huh. Maybe preparedness, nigh-omniscience style.

I gestured to one of the doors, opening it for Janev. "This is yours until you leave. Want me to show you where you can eat?"

"No, but thanks for asking. Not hungry. I'll just get some sleep before I head back to my own realm."

Janev stepped past me, making a beeline for he fluffy bed in the corner. Hmm. I'd lied. One more question.

"One more thing: if we're not physical beings anymore, why sleep?"

"I'm sure humans discovered that sleep was good for the body, mind, and soul." Janev winked at me. "Think about that."

"Sure will," I said, chewing on all the info as I closed the door to the suite.


	4. Chapter 2: Potential

_**UNIVERSAL **_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 2: Potential**

* * *

I yawned, sitting up in bed. And I understood.

I'd gone to bed still a bit overwhelmed with all the information Janev had shared with me, but after waking up it made a lot more sense to me. Good for the body, mind, and soul. Heh.

Of course, now that I could make heads and tails of all of it, I had more things to ask. Hope I wasn't driving him nuts with all the questions. I got dressed—felt like jeans today so my fantastic magical drawer game me some—and opened my door to find Madoka standing outside my room.

"Oh, hey you," I said. "What's up?"

"Just wanted to talk," my friend said. She was dressed in what looked like our old school uniform, but with a lot more white and pink on it than I remember. Looked so much less imposing than her goddess—guess the correct term was Existence—outfit, but you still felt that majestic presence that marked Madoka as the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance.

"Sure! What about?"

"Just about... all of it. The Existence stuff."

She sounded unsure of herself, which kind of confused me. What confused someone with omniscience?"

"Well, if you wanted to get technical, it's _nigh-_omniscience," Madoka said, smiling slightly. She did the mind-reading thing every once in a while. "But, please, Sayaka," you have to understand, even though I'm the Lady of Aspirant Radiance, I'm also, at the same time, Madoka Kaname. I know it doesn't make much sense. _I_ barely understand it myself. I mean, I have all this knowledge, and I understand all this knowledge, but it still seems so strange. I... I'm sorry, it's hard to explain."

It was actually less confusing than it should have been. Dunno. Maybe because I was her friend back when she was plain old Madoka, and I had seen her when had gone all... Godoka. I mean, sure, she had power so strong it was practically impossible to comprehend, but beyond that all I still saw my friend there, clear as day.

I liked it that way.

"Hey, I know that," I said, giving her a playful shove on her shoulder. "Someone's _still_ got to watch out for you, huh?"

Madoka giggled. "It was happening all though grade school, so why not here, huh?"

"You bet."

My stomach decided to grumble right then and there, so we started heading towards the dining room. Again, since we both wanted to talk, the walk there was long.

"You know, Madoka, I remember that you never liked anyone making a fuss over you. Does it ever... I dunno. Does it make you feel awkward when you have people like Janev or Joan or any of the others bowing to you and calling you by your title?"

Madoka shook her head. "No, not all. What Master Ssree'ten said was true, after all. At the same time that I'm Madoka, I'm also Lady Radiance. It's the same as... calling a circle a circle. And when they bow to me, it's... natural. Like it's a natural to breathe. To them, it's not a fuss, it's not something they're forced to do. It's just like their hearts beating."

I looked at Madoka for a few moments, my friend who was an Existence. "You know, Madoka, if _anyone _else explained it like that_,_ I'd call them out on egotistical BS." I chuckled. "You don't—never did, and never will—have a conceited bone in your body, so that explanation makes a whole lot of sense. In the end I guess I'm always weirded out by it since I never feel... compelled to do it, you know?"

"That's because you're my best friend, Sayaka. You're allowed to be a cosmic rule breaker."

I laughed at that.

* * *

We had cake for breakfast. Really. I think my friend still giggled over that wish that could have happened concerning Mami. Goddesses with cakes. Oy vey.

Huh. That reminded I should check up on my old friends in a bit. Just a quick peek to see how Mami, Homura, and, of course, Kyoko, were doing.

As I was finishing my slice of obscenely filling and impossibly delicious cake, Madoka leaned forward a bit. "Sayaka, can I ask a favor?"

I cocked my head. "Sure, go ahead."

"Master Ssree'ten said he would be leaving in a few moments, to go back to see the Lord Of Sunlit Night. I'd like you to go back with him, and greet Lord Night as Master Ssree'ten did me as a gesture of goodwill. Also," Madoka drew out an envelope from thin air, "I would like you to deliver this to him."

I took the envelope. "What's this?"

"The Lord Of Sunlit Night wished to speak with me in person. The letter will give him details for when and where."

"Oookay," I said, tossing the letter between my hands. "This is one of those metaphysical symbolic things, isn't it? It's not real."

Madoka smiled. "It's a metaphysical presence, yes. It's also very real. Just... maybe not physical."

"Hah," I said, "touché." I tucked the envelop into one of my pockets. "Sure thing, I'll go meet Lord Night. When did Janev say he was going?"

"Master Ssree'ten said soon. You can meet him outside his room."

"All righty." I pushed back my chair, but remembered something. "Oh, almost forgot."

"Mm?"

"He told me it was all right to call him by his first name, Janev. I don't think he'd mind you dropping the whole 'Master Ssree'ten' thing."

"True, Sayaka, I doubt he would. Remember, though, I see him as Master Ssree'ten because that is who he _is_. That's why must I address him as such."

I scratched my head. More of the X-equals-Y thing. "I guess that makes sense. I just hope when we get to see the Lord of Sunlit Night that he doesn't insist on 'Mistress Miki'. That'll drive me up the wall in no time."

Her friend grinned. "We'll get used to this. Eventually."

"God, I hope so."

* * *

I came to Janev's room just as he was closing the door. Perfect timing was a given in this place, huh?

"Ready to go?" Janev asked me as I approached

I raised an eyebrow. "How did you know?"

"You doubt my omniscience?"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, please."

Janev laughed. "I guessed. Honestly."

"I guess I have to believe you," I said, snorting. "Anything I need to bring with me? I assume your dimension isn't around the block."

"Actually, now that I think about it, relatively speaking Keltev would be right around the corner. Once you start journeying towards the Lady Of Infinite Helix or the Lord Of Unsung Sorrow is when it turns into a cosmic hike. And don't get me started on the Lord Of Fire Between.

It took me a few moments for those names to really register. There were _three_ other Existences out there, too? "How many of them are there?"

"With the emergence of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance, those five that I named. Could possible be more, but I wouldn't know." Janev scratched his head. "I think there are some things even Keltev has to keep from me."

"And here I thought Madoka was special," I said, jokingly.

Janev swung to face me, and I saw the humorous glint was gone from his red eyes. "She _is_ special. Special almost beyond our comprehension. Never doubt their importance, or the power they wield. Without them, we—" He stopped suddenly, rubbing his forehead. "Sorry, didn't mean to snap at you like that."

I was a bit taken aback, but it looked like I had hit a nerve. Not important. I shook my head and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right. I was just trying to joke about it, is all."

"Yeah, I see that now," Janev said, sighing. "Man, _I_'_m_ getting too serious. The universe is about to end when that starts to happen."

"Nuh-uh," I cut in. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't think you've got the magical mojo to pull that stunt off. Besides, let's wait a few more months between reality rewrites, okay?"

Janev stared at me for a moment. Then he blinked and started to laugh, hard. When he was done—which took almost a minute—he again faced me. "Heh. I barely know you and you can make me lose it like that."

She grinned. "I had a friend named Kyoko. She's sharp with that mouth of hers. Guess some of it must've stuck."

"Ah, really. I should I meet her one of these days."

"She's still on Earth," I noted.

"Come to think of it, I'd like to visit Earth, too."

My heart beat a little faster. "We can do that? Go back to the, uh, regular universe?"

"Yes. We do have to check a lot of our power at the door, though. We go into the physical universe as-is, we tend to strain space-time, especially near inhabited planets. That's why I said we'd have to break some rules if we wanted to do something major while physically in the universe."

I rubbed my head. "Come to think of it, I'd like to go back to Earth, too. Say hi to my friends." I stopped, thinking about that for a second. "That's okay, too, right?"

"Probably. I wouldn't know."

"Really?" I asked, puzzled. "You never visited your old friends on your planet?"

Janev shook his head, and a caught a wave of sadness as he did so. "Couldn't. After the events that transformed my friend into an Existence, the Incubators obliterated our world."

* * *

We didn't talk much after that little bombshell.

Madoka dropped by to say goodbye to us. Janev, of course, did his bowing and scraping thing.

Then it was time to go. With a final wave to Madoka, I swept my arms back, as if parting a curtain. The walls of the castle moved closer, as if to smash our faces, but we moved _past_ it, _through_ it, into the semi-dimension where space seemed to surround us but really didn't.

I turned to Janev. "Where to now?"

"I've always been impartial to the long scenic route."

"As opposed to...?"

"The short scenic route."

I snorted. "Whatever, man. Lead on."

Janev shrugged, making a gesture with his hand. Janev turned to me as that weird door that had showed up when he first appeared again popped into existence. As it opened, he said, "Remember not to exert your full presence on the universe when we step into it."

How exactly did you do something like that? "What happens if I do?"

"When I did it when I first ascended to this plane, I..." Janev paused, thinking. "Well, let's just say that the interior asteroid belt around Epsilon Eridani has a few less asteroids in it. Or a lot more smaller ones"

I thought about that for a few seconds. "Wow, not kidding about the power we have."

Janev looked sheepish for a second. "To be fair, they were small asteroids. Itty-bitty things. I just made them bittier, is all."

I laughed. "All right, fine, I'll try not to hurt any poor space rocks."

"Attagirl," Janev said as he stepped through the doorway.

* * *

"Hmm. This is different," I said. I could feel, somehow, that we were back in the normal universe. I could feel all kinds of... energies. I think I could even feel traces of... something?

"You're feeling all the cosmic energies permeating the universe," Janev told me. "From light to radiation to dark matter to even magic."

"You're right," I said, rubbing my head. It wasn't like it was giving me a headache, or anything, but it was just so... _much_ that was starting to feel overwhelmed. I couldn't make sense of it, other than the fact that it was there.

"And don't worry, I can't understand what all that energy means, or where and when it came from, either," Janev told me reassuringly. "It would take a mind a lot bigger than ours to even start to comprehend it.

"Like one of the Existences." I didn't make it a question.

"Right on."

Janev started walking, which threw me for a loop. You can't walk in space, not without something solid underneath you and without gravity to hold you there. See? I didn't sleep through _all_ my classes.

Come to think of it, space was a vacuum.

My companion turned back to me. He must have seen how confused I was because he simply said, "Phenomenal cosmic power, remember?"

I noticed Janev's mouth hadn't moved. I was hearing his voice in my head. All righty. Well, if we could do the telepathy thing—which wasn't new to me, because of the Incubator back on Earth—I guess walking should be cake.

I took a step forward, and as I did so space lit up underneath my feet. I stepped onto what looked like a golden pathway made up of countless stars. I stared at it for a few moments before looking back to Janev.

"Those aren't stars," he said. "I just fed some energy into some space dust to get it nice and glowy, and formed it into this pathway."

I raised an eyebrow. "Those sure look like stars, not dust light bulbs."

Janev, still walking, shrugged. "Just a little energy can go a long way. In open space we can exert a little more power than if we were on an inhabited planet. I mean, the worst we can do is wipe out a random comet or something."

I decided that that explanation would be good enough for me, so I took off after Janev.

We passed several stars as we walked as in many minutes, which again puzzled me. The little part of me that had paid attention in science class remembered that stars were really far apart, like light-years apart.

Out of nowhere, I suddenly _knew_ that the reason why were passing up entire solar systems so quickly was because Janev and I were moving fast. We were walking faster than light on my companion's glowing dust road.

It hit me, right then and there, of the power I _did_ have. I knew I could, for real, destroy a planet if I called on more of my power. I could scour the Earth clean. Strip it of life, just like that.

That scared me a little.

"Hey, what's wrong, Sayaka?"

I looked down at my hands. I realized I had stopped walking, which had prompted Janev's question. "Just wrapping my head around what I can do now. What I am." I thought of the hidden selfishness in my wish, and when I had turned into a Witch and almost killed my friends. Did kill, in Kyoko's case. "What I might do." My vision blurred a bit, and as I wiped at my eyes I realized I was crying. I sank to my knees and cradled my face in my hands.

God, what monster could I become? Oktavia was terrible, even with my regular Puella Magi power and that accumulated guilt and self-hatred. With my new power, what could I do? Who could I hurt? Who could I destroy?

Janev walked back to me and put a hand on my shoulder. It felt reassuring.

"You're remembering your wish," he said, humor replaced with warmth and understanding, "and how it might not have been as selfless as you thought it was. You're worrying that you might do something horrible."

"It was selfish, and I _have_ done horrible things," I said. "And with all this power I have now, what I could do frightens me."

My companion looked me in the eyes. "News flash, Sayaka. You're Xori'an." Janev paused for a second. "Well, you're human, but it's all the same for what I have to say. We're not perfect. We make mistakes. We can dig ourselves into a deep, dark, pit. But we can dig ourselves out of that darkness and make amends for those mistakes." Janev turned to look out at the universe. "I'm not proud of everything I've done while I was still a mortal, but I've put it behind me. No need to dwell on the past, you know. Especially since it's silly for us, since our home plane doesn't exist on a conventional timeline." He looked me in the eyes. "Now, come on. While the crying damsel in distress look does have its appeal, I think you look better with your eyes dry."

He helped me back to my feet, where I jerked a bit when I felt one of his hands wipe a tear from my cheek.

"There, much better," he said, with a friendly grin. He took my hand and led me back along the illuminated road.

The waterworks stopped after a few steps, which let me do a double take on my hand.

"So... is that what you say to all the girls?" I asked jokingly.

Janev turned to me, grinning. "Only the ones who need a reassuring word."

I snorted. In a more serious tone, "What about you?"

"Oh, hell yes I did," he said. "I was more frightened about what I could do than you are."

I smirked. "Then you got over yourself, huh?"

"Something like that." He stopped walking, prompting me to stop, too. "And I'll add that I don't think someone like the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance would be a bad judge of character, so I think you'll turn out all right."

I felt different kinds of tears coming, but I suppressed them. "Something else you say to all the girls?"

"Just the ones I think will turn out all right." Janev said.

Using the hand that wasn't gripping mine, my companion gestured into empty space. I noticed that the star-road had ended abruptly where we stood. At its terminus one of Janev's trademark doors opened.

He turned back to me. "The Lord Of Sunlit Night is waiting."


	5. Chapter 3: Majesty

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**by Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Majesty**

* * *

"Wait, one sec," I said.

Janev let go of my hand—which I felt kind of ambiguous about, but I could think about that later—and swiveled to face me. His eyebrows raised in question.

"First, um, you mention that you're a big ferret, yet you visited Madoka in human form. Should, I, uh, turn into a ferret myself?"

Janev shook his head. "You don't have to. Keltev doesn't get stuck on things like physical form, and I don't think the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance does, either. I only did it myself because I thought it would be a nice change of pace."

Mid-speech, Janev disappeared, to be replaced with a bipedal ferret-looking creature with red-streaked black fur and armor that shifted to fit his new form. I noticed his eyes looked the same.

I should have freaked out, I think, but I knew, instinctively, that this was Janev, just... different. The aspects that I had come to identify Janev with hadn't changed a bit. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it should, if I had been a regular human.

Hmm. I guess being an ascended Puella Magi helped insulate you from these kinds of things.

"I think I've seen this in an anime before, where the boy could turn into a ferret. There were magical girls, too."

"What's an anime?"

"Never mind," I said, laughing. "Second question: armor or..." I gestured to myself. I was wearing the jeans and shirt I had put on earlier. "This all right?"

"Sure," Janev-the-ferret said. "Keltev cares even less about clothes than he does about what form you take."

Hmm. I guess. Still, since I was Madoka's rep here, I could at least try, you know. I gestured and let my power flow to replace my clothes with my armor.

"I'll go with this anyway," I told Janev.

"Works for me," the ferret said.

* * *

Janev and I stepped through the dimensional door, and we found ourselves in a place that looked just like the star-speckled universe we had left. I knew it wasn't, but the appearance of this plane was just like how it had been while Joan and I had been talking. Maybe there weren't enough interior decorators?

While I was making note of that my companion cupped his paws to his mouth and bellowed, "_KELTEV_! _I_'_M HOOOOOOOME_!"

I looked up at him from where I'd flinched, hands clapped over my ears. "Ow! What was that for!?"

Janev's expression didn't change—not having a human face anymore, I guess—but I could sense that he was grinning ear to ear. "It's my thing."

"It is his thing, as much as it annoys me," a new voice said from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It wasn't particularly loud, but it was powerful in a way I can't describe. I looked away from Janev, trying to see—

I almost gasped. He stood there. A Xori'an, maybe a few hairs taller than Janev, with silver fur and amber eyes. He was dressed in ferret-friendly armor similar to, but much more ornate, than Janev's.

In the shadows of his fur and armor, I could see the infinity of the universe reflected out, darkness speckled with light. His eyes gleamed with the light of countless suns, and behind them I could see his strength of purpose, a will harder than the universe itself tempered with an understanding benevolence.

This was the Lord Of Sunlit Night, in all his majesty.

Without thinking, I dropped to one knee, bowing my head. What else _could_ I do, in the face of such a presence? Of such an Existence?

"Welcome, friend of Janev," Lord Night said. "Please, rise."

I did, automatically. I thought my knees should have shivered and buckled, but no. I didn't feel weak at all. I felt as good as I'd ever felt.

"My name is Sayaka Miki," I said as I faced him squarely. I was expecting my teeth to be chattering, for the words to come out garbled and broken. I was never public speaker material, and I was speaking to an audience to end all audiences. "My Lord Of Sunlit Night, I wish to extend the greeting and thanks of my Lady, the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance."

I looked at the Lord Of Sunlit Night, and a part of me wanted to shy away from him. Not out of fear, but because I felt so... little. So insignificant. So...

"You are nothing of the sort, Mistress Miki," Lord Night said. When he said my name like that, formally, I didn't feel the slightest bit bothered by it. He, the Lord Of Sunlit Night, was acknowledging me as _me_, as who I was, as Sayaka Miki. Hell no, it wasn't bothering me. "You are important to this universe, to your Lady. And, it seems," Lord Night faced Janev, who had shifted to human form, "To Janev." Lord Night chuckled. "Every single female you comes across."

"Only every single _single_ female I come across, I'll have you know," my traveling companion said in a tone that made it sound that this was an old familiar joke.

Lord Night laughed in response to that. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." The Existence turned back to me. "Mistress Miki, inform your Lady that I am honored by her greeting and by her choice of messenger."

Me? He meant me?

I was forgetting something. Oh.

"Milord, one more thing," I said, reaching into a satchel that I had on my armor. "My Lady wished for me to deliver this to you." I held out the envelope.

Lord Night stepped over to me, I noticed, not forcing me to walk to him. He took the letter. The Existence looked at the paper in his paw intently, then turned his gaze back to me. "Also inform Lady Radiance that I will make contact with her through other channels concerning this letter."

The Lord Of Sunlit Night gestured—I noticed the unopened envelope had disappeared—and the pseudo-space we had been surrounded by was replaced by a forest. It looked almost like something from Earth, except there was a lot more blue than green. The air smelled nice.

"Janev, please show Mistress Miki around, let her get rested before she returns to her realm."

"Of course."

With a nod to me and Janev, Lord Night disappeared.

* * *

I stared at the spot the Lord Of Sunlit Night had been occupying for a few seconds. I slowly turned to face Janev.

"Is that... Is that how you felt when you first saw Madoka?"

He nodded to me. "The exact same. Now you understand why I treat the Existences as such a big deal. Because they are."

"Yeah, I get that now," I murmured, rubbing my head. "I wish my delivery could have been better, though. Seemed like I made a bad first impression."

The Xori'an cocked an eyebrow. "I thought that you handled it perfectly."

"Didn't feel like it."

"Trust me, I felt the same way when I was speaking to Lady Radiance," Janev said. "I guess we just feel more awkward when we're the ones in the hotseat."

"Sounds about right," I said.

Janev just nodded. "Come on," he said, beckoning to me. "Let me show you around."

He led me through the forest, which I was guessing was the same thing as Madoka's magic castle. Through the trees, I could catch brief flashes of other Xori'ans.

Mostly, though, I just stared in wonder. I was probably the first person to see an alien planet. Cool. Well, not counting Madoka, I guess, but omniscience was kind of cheating.

After ten minutes of wandering around, we stopped by a... hole in the ground. I looked at Janev questioningly.

"Here's your room for the night," he announced.

I blinked. "My what?"

The Xori'an gave an exaggerated sigh. "Your room," he repeated, and nudged me in.


	6. Chapter 4: Power

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Power**

* * *

"So, what did you find at the bottom?" Joan asked me as we stared out at the stars.

"A room just like the ones we have here," I said in exasperation. Not at Joan, but at the memory of the whole thing. "The bed even looked similar."

Joan looked pensive. "Maybe they made it just for you?"

I shrugged. "It's what I'm thinking. I somehow go the feeling that they don't do beds themselves. At least beds that humans find comfortable, anyway."

"Interesting," the other girl said, taking a sip of her tea. It was some French flavor that didn't do much for me but Joan seemed to love. "And how was the journey back here?"

"Not hard," I said, being mostly true. It took me a while to get, especially since Janev's directions had been a bit sketchy. Something like "Think of where you are and where you want to be. Your power will take care of the rest. The flashy artistic stuff is just an extra." Vague as hell. Luckily I had been able to make it back without crashing into a black hole or whatever. That would've sucked.

"Hmm," Joan said, resting her chin on her free hand. "One of these days I'd like to set foot back in the universe again. It's one thing to see it from afar, but to directly observe it, firsthand, would be something else entirely.

"Mm-hmm," I agreed. "It's really is. I mean, we can see the stuff here in this plane, but once you can actually feel the universe again, man, it really hits you."

I heard Joan laugh. "What's that term you're always using nowadays? Something something power?"

"Phenomenal cosmic power," I said with a chortle of my own. "Janev used that term almost every time he could."

Joan looked sidelong at me. "You know, Sayaka, Janev comes up in almost every conversation we've had lately."

"He did teach me a lot. It's only natural."

Joan didn't lose the look. "If you say so."

I narrowed my eyes in mock annoyance. "He's a ferret. A walking ferret."

"Last I saw him, he looked like a redhead."

Joan was going to tease me about this, wasn't she? And here I thought Catholic saints—yes, I found which religion was which, thank you very much—were supposed to be all... saintly and stuff. Gah.

"This is going to happen all the time, isn't it?" I said to Joan.

"Until it gets old," Joan agreed smugly.

"Great," I said, throwing my hands up. "I hope Madoka doesn't do the same thing. That would just suck."

We laughed about that for a few moments until Joan asked another question. "Speaking of Janev and his species, what was the Lord Of Sunlit Night like?"

I had to think hard on that one. I almost just said "just like Madoka", but that wouldn't be true, at least for me. I never felt the need the do the bowing thing to Madoka as I had to Lord Night.

So I just said, "He's... _a lot_."

Joan nodded as if it made sense to her. And hey, maybe it did.

I jerked when I felt a... twinge. Not felt, per se, but sensed, somehow.

I turned to Joan. "Did you...?"

She nodded, eyes wide.

Without really thinking about it, I waved my hands, shifting the view of the pseudo-space we had been watching.

Joan's arms moved as well, and soon we panned and focused until we were looking at a medium-sized planet surrounded by a covering of dark clouds. We looked closer, past the cloud banks, and saw it was just as life-filled as Earth. In fact, I think I saw two different intelligent species, spread out over a huge continent.

Members of both species were running around in a panic, though it looked like the ones concentrated to the west were fleeing from—

Something flashed down from the sky and wiped out one of the villages.

"What the...!?" I cried out.

Shocked, I altered the view to look at the sky. I frowned when I saw something else begin a fiery descent towards another village. I studied it closely.

An asteroid, but something about it seemed wrong. Like it was... fuzzy?

It crashed, wiping out another settlement.

Horrified, I broadened the view of the planet until I could see the space around it. I saw clusters of asteroids, most of them the size of a large car, orbiting the planet. And...

Wait, that couldn't be right.

"Those are Incubators," Joan whispered. "Hundreds of them."

My eyed widened as a small group broke off from the swarm darted over to an asteroid, covering it with their bodies. The rock and the creatures clinging to it grew blurry, distorted, as is something was bending light around the asteroid.

The rock began to break orbit, falling towards the planet. It burst into fire as it hit the atmosphere, and the Incubators swarming on it were vaporized. When they disappeared, the distortion vanished.

The asteroid wiped out a third village.

"_Sainte Marie Mère de Dieu_," I heard Joan gasp.

"What..." I stammered. "What are they doing?"

"There are two intelligent races on that world," Madoka suddenly said from behind me. Surprised, I turned to look at her. She was staring at the planet, utter sadness in her eyes. Her hands were scrunched around her skirt. "The Incubators believe one of the races is more genetically compatible for their contracts. However, they are in constant war with the other race, and because of that their social development has been slowed. The Incubators are aiming to wipe out the opposing species so they have a new race to contract with. They don't know that, soon, the two peoples would have signed a peace treaty. "

A fourth village was obliterated.

"You have to do something, Madoka!" I said, my voice cracking. "They're... they're going to kill them all!"

My friend shook her head. "I cannot, Sayaka. I'm... limited to how far I can interact with the universe, my power notwithstanding. Circumstances and conditions." Madoka shifted her gaze from the screen to look me in the eyes. "_I_ can't stop them." For a brief second, the sorrow left my friend's eyes and I saw a flash of anger. As it happened, Madoka's normal clothing flickered to that of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance.

It took me a while to realize what she'd said.

"All right," I said, my teeth set.

"We cannot let this stand," Joan said from beside, also getting what Madoka had said to me.

"Damn right," I snarled, swiping my hand in front of me. A door between dimensions opened as I conjured my armor around myself. "I have a bone to pick with 'em."

* * *

The Incubators had just covered another minivan-sized rock with their bodies and were driving it towards the atmosphere. As I closed in, propelled by my magic, every single one of the critters turned to face me, simultaneously.

Creepy.

So I punched the asteroid at a velocity of really freaking fast.

And suddenly, no more asteroid, but a cloud of gravel and Incubators and pieces of Incubators. Off to the side another asteroid exploded as Joan did the same. She'd picked up on our new powers quickly on the mad dash from the door to here.

The surviving Incubators abandoned the asteroids and drifted closer to Joan and me. Soon we were surrounded by fuzzy white bodies and faces that should have looked cute but now just made the situation more terrifying.

"Get out of here!" I yelled at them through my mind.

Not a single one of them moved. Not even blinked.

"Begone," Joan snapped. "Else we'll—_argh_!"

I gasped as _something_ wrapped around me, like a giant hand, and clamped down. I struggled as hard as I could, but punching asteroids into confetti apparently wasn't enough muscles to get me out of this. I could barely twist my head to see Joan, who seemed to be surrounded by the same distortion the Incubators had used to propel the asteroids.

"Anomaly," I heard one of the Incubators say, in that high-pitched, innocent-sounding voice identical to that of the Incubator on Earth.

"Identify," another one of them said.

"Contracted." one asked.

"Impossible. Power levels incongruent."

"Hypothesis."

"Not enough data."

"Conjecture."

"Possible variable for the heat-death equation."

"Course of action"

"Detain for study."

"Agreed."

On no they weren't. Last time one of them laid hands—ears—on me I'd been turned into a zombie, so I wasn't hot on the idea of being their guinea pig. I strained, called on more of my power, and I felt my arms move a few centimeters.

"Breaking gravimetric containment field."

"Strengthen."

"Agreed."

Whatever it was keeping me pinned doubled in strength, and the pressure almost caused me to pass out. But I wasn't going to. They'd ruined my life already, and the life of countless other girls. Now they wanted to bomb a race into extinction.

I felt like some payback. I called all the energy I could, and I realized that my vision had started to bleach out, like everything was fading to white.

"Breaking gravimetric containment field."

"Strengthen."

"Amplification impossible. Containment field at maximum power."

"Induce meson interruption in—"

My vision flared bright for a heartbeat, and when it returned to normal a heartbeat later the crushing energy was simply gone. There was a flash of light as Joan also threw off the force that had been holding her immobilized. I tried to catch my breath (and yes, I remembered we were in vacuum) as the Incubators finally stirred.

"Containment impossible," one of the Incubators said, seemingly not bothered by what Joan and I had just done.

"Course of action."

"One unit to relay information. Remaining units to delay."

"Agreed."

And then they swarmed us, dashing forward to slam their bodies into ours.

Each time one of them hit, it felt like getting smacked by a baseball bat swung by a gorilla. Without really knowing _why_ I did it, I threw out my hand. A circle of blue energy flared to life in front of it, and the dive-bombing Incubators caromed off.

My cutlass leaped from its sheath and I slashed into the crush of Incubators on the draw. It went through them like they weren't even there. As pieces tumbled away, I felt another of those containment field things try to trap me. Uh, no. I flexed my power outwards like before and cracked the binding field. I focused energy into my arm and made a slashing motion, the streamer of blinding blue light that burst from it vaporizing any of the Incubators in its path.

Out of the corner of one eye I saw one of the Incubators dashing away. Nope, I wasn't having that.

Again, without really knowing what I was doing, I reached my hand out at the distant creature and made a grasping motion. Abruptly the Incubator stopped running.

"Cool," I said to myself. I made a beckoning gesture with my free hand, and the Incubator reversed direction and came hurtling back at me. Then it flew off in two different directions as my cutlass bit into it.

The attacks grew faster after I took out the runner. They slammed into me even harder, and they kept on trying to lock me up in their containment field. It was getting harder to break each time they hit me with it.

Ugh. This kept up for much longer and they'd just exhaust us. Maybe...

I focused all the energy I could spare into my sword hand. I remembered Janev had told me we couldn't call upon our full power, otherwise bad things could happen. How much was too much, though? Guess I'd find out.

"Joan!" I called out. "Shield yourself!"

"From what?"

"I don't know!" I yelled as my cutlass began to shine blue, even brighter than the star of this system.

With a cry, I thrust my sword out above my head.

And then it all went blue.

* * *

"That was so Super Saiyan," I said muzzily.

I was falling.

My vision started to clear, and I realized I was falling, face-first, towards the planet.

I hit the atmosphere, and things started to get hot. I weakly spread my magic out, shielding me from the friction. I was surrounded by fire.

Ouch. Headache.

I hit the cloud bank as I fell, and it went dark. A few heartbeats later and I was past, and I could see the people I'd failed.

I'd tried so hard, too.

Story of my life.

Joan and I had stopped the Incubators from dropping more asteroids on the people there. But it looked like the dozen or so hits they had managed had started massive fires in the grasslands. Half the continent was going to burn up. They were still going to die.

Hadn't managed to get over myself and prevent myself from falling into despair. Hadn't kept myself from forcing Kyoko to kill herself. Hadn't been able to keep myself from hurting Madoka. Hell, I hadn't even been able to tell Kyousuke that I liked him.

One failure after another.

Story of my life.

"You have got to stop being so hard on yourself, Sayaka," Madoka said to me. Huh. Madoka was still back in magical girl heaven. How had she—?

"Nigh-omnipotence " Madoka answered. "The answer to everything."

I twisted around in the air, painfully, and saw Madoka, in Existence regalia, framed against the cloudy sky. She drew me in a hug, and it felt like the embrace of a mother, a sister, and a best friend, all in one.

I realized I had stopped falling.

"You stopped the Incubators, Sayaka," Madoka whispered to me. "You gave them hope."

I... felt something. Emotions. I felt anger, fear horror, grief. It dawn on me that I was feeling the collected feelings of the people of this world, channeled through Madoka to me. It hurt to feel their pain, but even as that thought came to me I began to feel something else. Something brighter. Something...

And then it began to rain.

* * *

I turned over in bed, wriggling into a more comfortable position

Wait a second.

I shot up, eyes wide, and realized I was back in my room, sitting on my bed. How did that work? A few moments ago I'd been going Musashi Miyamoto on a swarm of Incubators.

With Joan. Oh God! Was she all right?

"She's fine Sayaka. I wouldn't leave her."

I turned to my desk, where Madoka was sitting. She smiled at me. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," I said in reply, scratching my head. "I feel a lot better, at least." Headache was gone, but I still felt a little stiffness in my shoulders. Oof.

"I know you have questions, Sayaka. Go ahead and ask them."

I cocked an eyebrow at my friend. "Don't you be going all mysterious Existence on me," I scolded.

"I just wanted to see your reaction," Madoka replied with a giggle.

"Hey, you already know what my reaction would have been," I said.

"Because of my omniscience?"

"No, because I've been friends with you since we were little. Come on, godly powers aren't the answers to everything."

Madoka grinned. An all-powerful Existence, yet I could still comfortable talking to her like this. Funny how the universe worked.

Smiling, I looked down at the bed as I played with the sheets. She was right, of course, I did have questions. Might as well ask them.

"So... what happened?" I asked.

"You stopped the Incubators from killing anymore of those people. The fires from the meteorite strikes would have killed more, but the rain snuffed them out."

"The rain just _happened_ to start right then and there?"

Madoka shrugged. "They do have a heavy rainy season that time of year."

I guess I'd just have to accept that. A part of me knew Madoka actually did have something to do with that rain, just not in the way a normal person like me could comprehend. Weird feeling.

"Gave them hope, huh," I said after a few moments

"Yes, you and Joan did," Madoka. "It was a good thing she came along, too."

"Oh, right, about that," I said. I remembered the pulse I'd released that had vaporized the Incubators. "Is she all right? I think I hit her pretty hard."

"You hit the Incubators much harder, but yes, she was able to weather that burst without much trouble. It took much more effort to fix the atmosphere."

"Wait, what?" I asked, confused.

"The shockwave that you used to destroy the Incubators also blasted a fraction of the planet's atmosphere into space."

My mouth dropped open.

"The air would have been drawn back to the planet in a year or so, with only minor local meteorological effects, but I don't think Joan was willing to take any chances, so she pulled it back in."

I drew my legs up and rested my head on my knees. "So now I know what it means when we use too much of our whammy near a planet. Man."

"You could have used a fifth of what you used and still gotten the same result, minus the atmospheric detonation," my friend explained. "You'll just have to learn to channel it better. We're not exactly lacking in time, you know."

"True," I said. I looked at my hand as I sent a little bit of energy through it. It crackled with azure lightning until I released the magic. I turned back to Madoka, who was still sitting there patiently."

"After seeing what they did, Madoka, can't you... do something to them?" I asked.

She shook her head, looking regretful. "I can't. I mean, in terms of power, it's easily within my reach. I could erase them from this reality. What they do is terrible." I saw anger glint in her eyes for a heartbeat. "But like I told you before, Sayaka, I can't. It's not my place in the universe to judge and destroy. It's not my purpose. I..." Madoka looked away for a moment. "I can't explain it."

I didn't say anything for a few moments. I could see the difficulty Madoka was having, trying to explain the workings of the universe—literally—to someone like me.

But I'm her friend.

I quirked a grin. "Come on. You had to help me with algebra one time, and despite what I bonehead I can be sometimes, I managed to get a B in that class. This honestly can't be any harder than polynomials.

Madoka didn't move for a few moments, expression completely neutral. Then the moment shattered when she grinned widely.

"You know, I think I'll agree with Ms. Saotome, Sayaka," Madoka laughed. "Just apply yourself more and you can do a lot."

I shared a chortle of my own. "We all know she was just paid to say that." I tightened my voice into seriousness. "But really, Madoka, try to explain to me. You can always talk to me. You're not alone."

Madoka nodded, breaking eye contact to look at the floor. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I swore I saw a tear streak down Madoka's cheek. When she lifted her head to look at me again, there was no sign of it.

"Let me start with what exactly I am now," Madoka said to me, slowly. I sat up a little straighter, realizing that what Madoka was going to say was going to be very serious and very important.

"I'll start at the beginning, or as close to beginning as relevant: the Incubators. The Incubators are one of the oldest species in the universe. Billions of years old. During that time, their technology grew so advanced as to be practically indistinguishable from what humans would think of as magic. However, as much as it _seemed_ like magic, it was still just science, constrained by physical laws as they knew them. Their technology wouldn't be able to save the universe from the ultimate entropy they feared, hence why they began to search for new energy sources. Eventually, they discovered magic, the special life energy that certain members of certain species could manipulate.

"Existences—with a single exception, the Lord Of Fire Between—are the transcendent beings born from an Incubator's contract, who had an incredible innate power as a mortal. The wish they request of the Incubator is so large in scale that it borders on paradoxical and would twist the underpinnings of the universe itself. Both conditions—the innate power and the paradox—are essential for the birth of an Existence."

"For that first part, that was because of all the time-traveling Homura did, right?" I asked.

"Partially. My mortal form had the power every time, timeline notwithstanding. However, if you remember how many timelines she visited, at no point did I ever make that crucial wish. What made Homura so important was that her many... resets insured in that particular timeline, at that particular time, and at that particular place, I would be able to make a wish that would rewrite reality."

"Wishing for the power to erase every Witch before they're born, past, present, and future. You saved each and every one of them before they could be corrupted."

My friend nodded. "Just so. Since the Witches are a fundamental component of the Incubators' system—of reality, when it comes down to it—that wish caused a rewriting of the rules of the universe. Then you get a continuum that's been reset to accommodate the new rules."

Madoka let me mull that over. I understood—well, kind off—the conditions that had transformed Madoka into an Existence, though the information about the Incubators made a few pieces fall into place, like how they seemed so powerful but still needed Puellae Magi. It also made them even scarier than they already were. Billions of years old? Dang.

Speaking of Incubators, I think I understood something. Why Madoka said she couldn't act against them.

"So I guess when you said you can't just erase the Incubators is because it would make its own time loop. Or paradox." Man, this was tricky to talk about it. "If you erased them, there wouldn't be an Incubator to grant your wish to become an Existence, and if you're not an Existence you couldn't erase them in the first place."

Madoka shook her head. "Not quite. The moment I became an Existence, I began to exist outside the universal continuum, the timeline. I'm not affected by the causality of the universe. You know, cause-and-effect."

Um... okay. Now I was a more confused. If she could take them out without any major consequence, why not?

"It all comes down to the word _can_'_t_," Madoka said, doing her mind-reading thing. "Think of it like this: can a circle have sides?"

"No, otherwise it would be a square or whatever, not a circle," I said automatically.

"Same thing with me. "I _am_ the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance, the Existence of hope. I am what I am to give hope to the Puellae Magi—or any of the other Incubator contractors—in their darkest hour. I cleanse their Soul Gem before they can transform into a Witch, and in that way serve as a part of the universe."

Madoka leaned back in my chair, playing with one of the ribbons that decorated the hair.

"It's _not_ my purpose to destroy the Incubators, or anyone else. If you asked me if I _should_ destroy them, regardless of can or cannot, my answer would still be no. They shouldn't be obliterated, at least by me, because it's not something I'm meant to do." She looked away for a moment. "And the Incubators have their purpose in this universe, as well."

As Madoka explained it to me, I realized something of the bigger picture. Back when we were still school girls, we have to deal with rules, like getting to school on time and listening to the teachers. We had to deal with laws like not shoplifting stuff—I suddenly had an image of a sad-faced Kyoko pop up in my head—or driving too fast. As humans, we couldn't do things like jump from high places or stand over a bucket with ammonia and bleach in it, at least if we wanted to live.

After I'd become whatever I was now, a lot of the rules didn't apply because of the new power I had to throw around, but many—most?—of them still did. I couldn't completely escape physical laws and stuff, even if I could so pretty insane stuff with my magic. And that didn't even cover things like limiting my power for fear of warping space-time.

Madoka was on a whole other level. Heck, she said she wasn't affected by causality anymore, so screw those rules.

But, even free as she was from the old rules, she now had to worry about the new ones. Cannots and should nots and whatever else. They weren't rules worded like "You shouldn't beat someone with a baseball bat, otherwise you'll go to jail." Madoka had to deal with something like "You _cannot_ destroy the Incubators because then you would be Not-Madoka." All this metaphysical stuff really didn't make all that much sense to me.

"It made enough sense for you to grasp the basic concept," Madoka said. "I guess I can still tutor okay, huh?"

I chuckled softly. "Yeah. But while I barely get the broad picture, I can't even begin to understand what it means for you, you know? What your limits are and what they mean to you. Guess I can't be that much of a help."

"Oh, Sayaka," Madoka said. She got up from the chair and walked over to sit down on the edge of the bed. This time I saw the tears glistening in her eyes. "Just knowing you'll listen, and knowing that you'll help in any way you can means so much to me."

She drew me into a hug, and I felt my ears sting as I teared up, too.

"Hey, it's just like it always was," I choked as I hugged my best friend, the goddess.

We stayed like that for a few minutes, just giving strength to each other.

Eventually Madoka sat back, holding out a hand. She was holding a cup of steaming hot chocolate. Where it came from, I have no idea. Chalk another one up to omnipotence.

"Nigh-omnipotence," Madoka corrected me as she rose and turned to leave my room.

"Madoka," I called as she opened the door.

"Yes?"

"Just... one more thing: Why me? I'm just plain old Sayaka Miki. Well, not plain anymore, but close enough compared to someone like you."

She smiled at me. "There's no 'just' a Sayaka. You're my best friend, Sayaka, and for an Existence of hope, that means the universe to me."

Madoka left, shutting the door gently behind her as she went.

I took a sip from the magical hot chocolate, thoughtfully.


	7. Chapter 5: Game Over

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Game Over**

* * *

"Joan," I said in a deadpan. "Asteroids are not your friends. They will not give you hugs."

The Frenchwoman gave a most unsaintly snort as she brushed away the remains of the rock she'd slammed headfirst into. I drifted closer to her, propelled by my power.

"It was clever," the Frenchwoman said. "Pulling it down and interposing it between us."

"Well, yeah," I said, gesturing first to my cutlass, then to her longsword. "At my age you were taking swings at enemy knights while I was sitting in class listening to Ms. Saotome's most recent dating disaster. You're a much better swordsman than I am, so I'm not going to play your game if I can help it."

"You're quite good yourself, Sayaka."

"I notice you didn't say I was better."

"Of course. Lying is a sin," Joan said with a laugh.

I snorted, sheathing my sword as Joan brushed dust from her armor. Off to my right was the star Tau Ceti, where another dozen or so ascended Puellae Magi were zipping around the asteroids and space dust, flexing their powers. Some of them I recognized: Cleopatra (yes, _that_ Cleopatra), an American who went by Annie Oakley, Queen Himiko, and a young pink-haired French girl named Charlotte David (pronounced Dah-veed, to those who were wondering).

Joan got along well with Charlotte, despite Charlotte declaring herself an agnostic. Every once and a while they would get into these deep discussions about philosophy. I kind of excused myself from them when that happened.

I, surprisingly, got along with her, too, even after I discovered that she was the Puella Magi that would, in another timeline, transform into the witch that killed Mami. She was deeply apologetic about what she had done—Could have done? Would have done? Blah!—and was doing her best to be friendly to me as a surrogate for Mami. Knowing firsthand the horrifying things you could do as a Witch, I decided rocks and glass houses were for the birds and did my best to be nice.

Wasn't hard, all things considered. The only thing that bothered me in a tiny, tiny way was how much she loved her sweets, cheesecakes in particular. I did have to admit she could make a killer soufflé, though.

After the scuffle with the Incubators a month ago, if you counted time as it passed normally, I'd gathered some of the Puellae Magi who were interesting in returning to the physical universe. We were testing out our abilities, learning our upper limits. I think I was getting a handle on the max power I could safely call on without blowing chunks out of planet's crust, but we still had a lot of ground to cover.

"Hmm," I heard Annie say as she floated to a stop next to me. "Sayaka, I think I see someone, over that way." She pointed.

I squinted off into the distance while I extended my power to try to touch on whatever the American had seen. She had sharp senses, much more acute than mine.

I strained more, then suddenly touched a familiar presence.

"Oh, _him_ again," Charlotte sniffed from behind me, also identifying the person. "I do not like him. He is indecently glib."

I turned to the younger girl, an eyebrow raised. "Hey, be nice. Wasn't for him, we wouldn't have learned to do any of this stuff. Not for a long time, at least."

Charlotte sniffed again and zipped off. I turned to Joan.

"Go ahead, talk to him," she said. "I'll make sure the others don't break anything they shouldn't."

"Thanks."

"As always."

Joan flashed away. I turned to the where Janev Ssree'ten was walking in human form. He as doing that danged light-road again. Ostentatious, much?

I drifted over and met him halfway. "Been a while," I said as a greeting.

"Busy with stuff," he said.

"Busy with what? Pushing people down holes?"

His eyes widened. "Please tell me you're still not angry about that."

"Well... not angry," I said nonchalantly. As I did, I extended my energy as sneakily as I could and tugged a melon-sized piece of space dust towards the Xori'an. "I was just a bit annoyed that I very politely showed you to your room in our castle, while you shoved me down a hole in your forest."

"Hey, it was just a little nudge," he protested. "I—"

"Janev?" I said in a singsong voice.

"Hmm?"

"Hugs," I said, and dropped the rock on his head.

* * *

"Well, that's reassuring to know," I heard Janev grumble.

"What is?" I asked.

"That my species and yours aren't so different. Human females are just as psychotic as Xori'an ones."

"Oh, says you," I retorted. "That thing just bounced off your skull. And, besides, you pushed me—"

"Hey, stop bringing that up, Sayaka," Janev said. "We're already even. My observation on the evilness of human females is something unrelated."

"Fine, whatever," I snorted, waving it off. "You never answered my question."

His mouth thinned. "Same thing you had to deal with a month ago. The Incubators were being a little more... proactive than usual." Janev made a face. "They were thinking a little bigger this time. They were trying to cause a disruption in a star's photosphere. Wipe out one of two inhabited worlds in that solar system. Panic the the survivors so that more of them would be open to a contract."

"That's terrible," I said quietly.

"That isn't the most troubling part," Janev growled. "In the last month I've seen more instances of Incubators directly acting on a planetary population than I've seen in any three different centuries."

I frowned. "No idea on why they're doing things differently now?"

"None. They use deceit and subterfuge to get their contracts. It's how they do things. Their new plan of action is causing everyone to sit up and take notice." Janev looked away. "Sometimes I wish Keltev didn't have to deal with his limitations and just wipe them out. Save _everyone_ a lot of headaches."

I recalled something he had said when he'd first appeared.

"Janev," I asked carefully, "what did they do?"

For a second I thought he was just going to brush my question off, but he turned back to me. "The system we had was a little different. We fought Devourers. Incubators still transformed males of our species into... I guess the closest human term would be a mage warrior.

"In this system Devourers were spontaneous occurrences, like how Wraiths are today. We also had Soul Gems, but there was no way for us to recharge them. The contract wound us up, and once we ran out of time our Soul Gem went dark. And when our Gem blackened, it would collapse in on itself, destroy our body, and trap our soul within. Then a Devourer would enter our dimension to assimilate it and become more powerful.

I tried to envision what that could be like. Couldn't.

"Imagine you were sharing your mind with a hungry alien creature that killed people and fed on your friends' souls. Imagine sharing your mind with with a thousand other people, and they were all screaming."

I shivered.

"The alternative was arguably worse. If your Gem blackened and, somehow, a Devourer did not come to take you, you were trapped within your Soul Gem. Inside there, time was skewed. A minute literally felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of dark emptiness."

I felt goosebumps rise on my arms.

Janev kept telling his story. "Every once and a while, the Incubators would select a... ripe Devourer and destroy it, collecting the life and magical energy it had accumulated."

"What about the souls?"

Janev looked away.

"Don't answer, then," I said. Janev's reaction told me all I needed to know about what happened to those souls.

"We were fighting a losing battle. More and more Devourers were showing up, and soon my species was facing extinction. In one last battle, I fought the most powerful Devourer I'd ever come across, and I did my best to buy my friend a little more time, even if there wasn't really anywhere else for him to run. By that time we might've been the last two Xori'ans alive."

"You and the Lord Of Sunlit Night," I said.

"Yeah. I did what I could, but my Gem darkened and the Devourer absorbed me." Janev shuddered at the memory. "It was that that caused Keltev to finally contract with the Incubators. His wish was for the power to render all Soul Gems immune to the blackness of the final power drain. And from that you got the system with the Grief Seeds and Witches."

"The thing was, in this new system my species didn't work for the Incubators. Very few of us would ever fully corrupt our Soul Gems. Generally, our Gems just lost energy and faded from existence when they did. In any case, the Incubators didn't like the results they were getting, so a million of them used their gravity fields to pull the moon onto our planet. Cue cataclysmic kaboom."

I gasped.

He smiled sadly. "It wasn't as bad as it could had been. The mages of my world—like I said, not many us ever did become corrupted—combined our powers long enough to keep the moon from crashing onto the surface, at least for a while. It gave the rest of the people enough time to evacuate the planet in as many starships we could spare. End result was a scattering of Xori'ans all over the universe, and the remainder of us finding our power exhausted and Gems losing power."

"You should know the rest. It probably would have been similar experience to mine."

I thought of when I had just begun to make my transformation into a Witch in the reformed timeline, and Madoka had come to cleanse me before it could happen.

"Yeah, I understand."

Janev looked real tired. I guess I'd be too if I ever shared my own story with him. Janev shook himself, as is throwing the memory off. "But that's that. Just wanted to stop by to give you a heads up. They get frisky again and we'll have to do something."

"Thanks," I told him.

He nodded to me. "I'd better get going." He cocked his head, looking at something past me. Then he blew a kiss and waved wildly. I turned, just in time to see a scowling Charlotte give Janev a very rude gesture.

Laughing, Janever looked back to me. "All right, Sayaka, until next time."

"See you around, Janev," I told him.

* * *

"Really?" I asked Madoka a little while later.

"Yes."

"What for?"

"Just to be there in case something needs to be done."

"I... all right." I paused. "You knew I was going to ask if I could go back down there, didn't you?"

"Maybe. Besides, you don't have to ask permission for that, anyway. I'm not like your mother, or anything."

I scratched my nose. "All right fair enough. But really...?"

"I just thought killing two birds with one stone would be good, you know?"

"Oh, all right then. I'll go in a bit. I just need some time. You know, to think."

"Take all the time you need."

* * *

Kyoko screamed as she was knocked into the girder of a half-finished building.

Her arm snapped, but she did not have time enough to dwell on it as a wave of black foulness came seething her way. She rolled, barely avoiding the obscene energy, and used her momentum to jump back to her feet. She had to grit her teeth as her injured arm bumped against the ground.

Before here loomed a dozen Wraiths, each of them ugly and distorted, moaning as they dragged themselves closer. The closest Wraith lurched faster, jaw opening impossibly wide as it vomited cursed energy.

Kyoko leaped past the attack, closing in on the Wraith before it could adjust the torrent of malevolence. Her spear flashed as she opened a terrible wound from shoulder to hip.

She was not fast enough to dodge as the creature's death spasm sent a gnarled hand hammering into her back. She ended up in a heap as she was knocked head over heels, stunned.

The wails of the remaining Wraiths drew closer. Slowly, stiffly, Kyoko climbed back to her feet, using her spear to support her. Wobbling, she rubbed her nose on her good arm's sleeve. She spat on the floor in front of the Wraiths as she bared her teeth. "Come on. I've taken fifteen of you out already. The eleven of you should be cake."

The creatures shambled closer, sensing Kyoko's rapidly fading energy.

Quietly, as if to herself, Kyoko said, "Dammit Sayaka, these are the days I wished you hadn't gone and gotten yourself killed."

She straightened, leveling her spear one-handed at the remaining Wraiths. "All right, one at a time, or all at once. I don't care. Come get some."

And then I was finally close enough.

* * *

My energy exploded as I struck the ground, and the shockwave slammed the Wraiths through the air, away from Kyoko. I dampened the energy wave as much as I could in Kyoko's direction, but it was still enough to knock her back to the ground.

In addition to putting her on her back, it must've gone the whole nine yards and knocked her out, since she didn't stir as I stepped closer. I knelt next to her, cradling her close to me I as I sent my energy outwards. I felt the magic I'd released mend and repair the damage to her arm. I would focus on that first, then the rest of her body.

Just as I finished, her eyes shot open. She looked around wildly before she focused on my face. Her eyes widened.

"That's not poss—"

An earsplitting howl cut her off.

I turned towards the sound, and saw that eight of the Wraiths were still alive and lurching closer. Okay, fine then. I raised my open hand towards them, extending my magic outwards to contact each of them. I felt the Wraiths, looking for... ah-hah.

I touched on the curse that fueled them. It was a kind of magic. Dark as hell, sure, but still magic. I surrounded that grief with my own power, spreading it over each and every one of them.

Then I clenched my hand into a fist, compressing my magic around them.

With a final wail, the Wraiths imploded into a vortex of disintegrating curse magic.

"Heh," I said in satisfaction as I turned back to Kyoko. "Cool, wasn't—"

I jerked my head back as Kyoko took a swing at my face. She wasn't fast enough to tag me, and it wouldn't have hurt me even if it had, but I still flinched from it instinctively. The redhead wrenched herself out of my arms and bounded away from me.

"What the hell are you?" Kyoko snarled at me, jabbing her spear in my direction.

I held my hands up disarmingly. "Okay, okay, I know this is weird, but come on Kyoko, you recognize me! It's—"

I saw the the muscles in Kyoko's legs and arms tense. Instinctively I drew my magic to myself, augmenting my body. Kyoko's strike, which should have been lightning quick, seemed lazily slow as I let it brush past me. I bounded inside the spear's reach and grabbed hold of the haft. Kyoko stared at me in shock.

"Dammit, Kyoko!" I cried. "Could you stop this?"

Her response was to do something complex with her arms and a hip, breaking my grip on the spear despite my strength. The slash that came at my stomach was all part of the same motion, and with my speed enhanced as it was I saw the control and precision required to pull that stunt off. Even without any power beside that of a Puella Magi—and beaten up and tired—Kyoko had them in spades.

It wasn't really any wonder that she'd kicked my butt the one time we had gone at it.

I slipped away from her and waited a few meters way, wracking my brains for a way to talk her down.

"How dare you?" she screamed at me. "You tried putting on her face last time, and it almost got us killed. Hell no, it's not happening again. You're _done_, you son of a _bitch_."

And _I_ was supposed to be the stubborn one.

Another too-slow attack, this time deflected with an energy shield. Kyoko recovered almost instantly from the block, and came back for more.

I drew my cutlass and parried her thrust away. She attacked again and again, but each time I slid them out of the way. Even when she exerted more of her magic, casting illusory images of herself to confuse me, she still couldn't land a hit.

After a dozen more passes, I started to notice that she was becoming erratic, that her attacks were becoming sloppier.

She overextended on a jab, and I had more than enough time to send energy crackling through my hand.

"Game over," I muttered, and slammed my glowing palm into her chest.

With a _whuf_, Kyoko tumbled to the ground in a tangle of red. I waited for her to rise up again, but all she could do was raise herself up to her elbows. By the shivering in her arms I could see that she was, literally, past the point of exhaustion. Beyond caring.

"Do it," she snarled, and I saw frustrated tears in her eyes. She started sobbing. "I get it. Kill me while wearing her face. Just end it already. Dammit."

I watched Kyoko's tears—something I'd never dream to see—patter to the ground.

Slowly, carefully, I laid my sword on the ground and walked up to her. I cupped a cheek in my hand and angled her head so she could look me in the eye.

"One thing, first," I said deliberately. "A question."

Kyoko just glared at me, tears now sliding down her face.

"Did you _ever_ pay for those apples?"

The moment I said my piece, her mouth dropped open in shock, working as if trying to say something but failing to do so.

Then, voice cracking, "Oh my God, it really is you. _Sayaka_."

Then she did something that surprised the hell out of me.

She laid her head on my shoulder and started crying.

* * *

The sun had been going down before she had regained her composure. When she had managed to stop crying, she had led me back towards the old church she had used to live in. We stood outside of it, now. The thing was as battered and beat up as I remembered it.

The only words she spoke to me was to apologize for trying to take my had off. A month after I'd... gone away, a Wraith had masqueraded as me and tried to kill the three of them. I understood her reaction now, at least.

Other than that, though, silence.

We went through the entryway—Kyoko had kicked the door down the last time we had been here, and it looked like she'd never gotten around to fixing it. It was drafty inside, and Kyoko, back in her beat up cutoffs and hoodie, looked cold. I had reverted back to my tee and jean skirt, but the cold didn't affect me any.

Kyoko tiredly collapsed on one of the more intact benches. I'd managed to heal her bodily injuries and cleanse her Soul Gem with the curse shards, but she'd still expended a lot of power against the Wraiths and the following battle with me.

"Why here?" I asked her.

"Pissed off the last landlord," she said sleepily. "I'd go out and convince someone to give me a room 'cause of my good looks, but I don't think I've got enough steam left to convince a street vendor to try to sell me something."

"It's cold in here," I noted.

"Well, yeah, I've been cold before," she said thickly.. "I can deal."

I looked around at the bare church. "What about food? Didn't see you carrying anything on the way back here."

"Not that hungry" she slurred. " 'Sides... been... hungry before, too."

I waited for her to say something more, but Kyoko had passed out.

I looked at her for a few minutes before I decided on what I had to do.

* * *

I sped up into the sky, hoping I wasn't going to kill some poor innocent pigeon or whatever as I flew towards space. I'd wrapped my magic around myself, so most human technology shouldn't be able to detect me.

As soon as I'd broken out of the atmosphere, I accessed more power and increased my speed until I had blown past the moon. There, far away from where I could hurt anyone, I set a path for home.

Janev's faux-star road was cool, though just not really my thing.

I concentrated my force and will, and a swirling tunnel of energy opened up before me, looking for all the universe to see like an impossibly long surf tunnel. Taking one look back at Earth, I entered the pathway.

* * *

I reentered my home dimension, and while in false-space I called the castle. I almost literally bumped into Charlotte as I walked rapidly towards the kitchen.

"Sayaka, how was—"

"I need a cake. Cheesecake. Something," I said in clipped tone.

"Er... what?"

"I need a... cheesecake, stat," I said, deciding on the particular dessert.

"Er... but what kind? How large?" the French girl asked, completely confused. "Do you want—"

"Go nuts," I told her as I reversed direction. "And tell them to get me loaded plate of stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Stuff."

* * *

I got back to my room and started to rip the sheets from my bed. Don't know how comfortable they could be, but I could try. I rolled them as tight as I could—which meant a lot tighter than if I'd just been a regular girl—and carried the bundle with me back into the hall. I needed to talk to Madoka. Hopefully I'd run into her—

"Yes, Sayaka?" I heard Madoka say from behind me.

Sheesh. I turned to her.

"So next time, do I just go 'Madoka, I summon thee!'?"

"I could give you an exemption and just make you think it," my friend said with a slight grin.

I snorted. "All righty. Um, Madoka, I'm going to need to be fast about this. Can I ask—"

"It's done," Madoka cut in.

"—You to... wait, huh?"

"It's done. Well, some of it. You'll have to put in some work yourself, you know. Go, now."

"How did you... How could you have...?"

She cocked an eyebrow at me, smile growing wider.

"Right. The answer to everything," I said with sigh. I slid past her towards the kitchen. I hope she didn't mind how rude I was being. "Thanks, Madoka!"

"You're welcome. And don't worry, I won't hold it against you."

I smiled to myself as I hurried back to Charlotte. That cake had better be ready.

* * *

With a bit of juggling and creative use of my energy, I managed to make it back to Earth without losing anything in the asteroid belt or burning up when I hit the atmosphere. The moon had just risen, so I hadn't been gone for more than a few hours.

Worked for me. I'd had plenty of time to think on the flight back.

I stepped back into the church and placed the stuff I had brought on the big table in the middle of the raised dais. I picked the bundled blankets back up and went back to Kyoko. She was still out like a light, but shivering badly.

Gently as I could, I removed her boots and dusty hoodie and bundled her in the blankets as well as I could. The benches weren't very large, so I had to position Kyoko so she wouldn't tumble off.

With a little more creative juggling, I had her warm enough so that she looked almost peaceful.

Task completed, I took a seat on another of the less dusty benches, leaned back as well as I could on the low-backed seat, and started to think.


	8. Chapter 6: Unbroken

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Unbroken**

* * *

I cracked my eyes opened as I felt sunlight hitting my face. I got to my feet, stretching and yawning. I knew I should be raging cramped because of how badly unsuited the church bench was for sleeping in, but no, I actually felt pretty good.

Making sure not to step on anything, I took a look around. The food was still on the big fancy table, untouched by any bugs. I swear some of the stuff was still steaming. Charlotte had outdone herself on the cheesecake.

Shaking my my head, I walk around the interior of the church. Wow, this place was big, and, if it hadn't looked like a typhoon had hit it, impressive.

I caught sight of something unusual stacked near the opposite wall. I took a closer look, and realized the entire side of the building was lined with construction supplies. Wood, paint, screws, nails, panes of glass, _everything_. I picked up a can of paint and looked at the label. It declared "_Kaname Supplies: The World Is In Your Hands_."

I stared at the label for a few heartbeats, then craned my neck to face the ceiling.

"Madoka, that was just bad."

I got the impression of laughter, even if I couldn't hear anything.

Shaking my head, I replaced the can from where I'd taken it. I noticed that there was a grocery bag of apples at the end the pile. I looked up to the sky again, and felt a warm, unseen smile. Apples. Geez.

I heard rustling from where Kyoko was lying, so I left the stacks of construction supplies and sauntered over.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes sleepily until she saw me standing off a few meters away. She froze, eyes widening."

"Oh, holy God, it wasn't a dream," she gasped. She tried to stand, but she got tangled in the sheets and toppled to the floor with a yelp. Kyoko freed herself and frantically shot to her feet. I crossed my arms in front of me as she stared.

"But... how?"

"It'll take a while to answer that, trust me," I said. "And get your sweater back on. There might be sunlight coming in, but it's still cold. Here."

I gestured at the hoodie that I'd tossed over one of the benches and used my magic to send it over to Kyoko. I'd meant for it to land around her shoulders. But it sort of... flopped onto her head.

"Oookay, not my best toss," I muttered, half to myself.

Eyes still wide, she looked from the sweater hanging from her head back to me, then back to the sweater. I could almost feel her confusion.

She slowly pulled the hoodie over her shirt. Then, almost like it was an afterthought, she put her boots back on, too. Kyoko looked back to me, eyes begging for an answer.

"Come on," I said, beckoning to her. I heard her follow me as I walked towards the dais with its fancy table. I pointed to the plate—which, now that I was looking at it again in the daylight, looked like a full on serving platter—and told Kyoko "Eat."

She looked to where I was pointing, but tracked her gaze back up to me. "Sayaka," she asked, slowly, "is it _really_ you?"

I met her eyes. "Yeah, it's me, Kyoko."

For the second time in twenty-hour hours, Kyoko hugged me and began to cry.

* * *

"I swear, if you ever tell Homura or Mami that I was bawling back there, I'll come back on you. Haul off and break your face," Kyoko told me between bites as she inhaled a drumstick.

I drew an X over my chest. "Cross my heart, hope to die." I took a bite of toast that I'd taken from the plate. I wasn't really hungry, but I didn't want to make Kyoko feel awkward.

"Not funny."

I shrugged. All things considered, not the best of jokes. "Sorry. But, speaking of them, where _are_ Mami and Homura?"

"There were reports of a huge Wraith build up over in Kasamino, so the two of them went over to help the girls there deal with it." She set down the chicken leg. "This is lot more symbolism than I care for."

"Huh?"

"Food on the altar."

Oh, that's what those fancy tables were called. "How's what symbolic?"

"It's a Christian thing," she said shortly. I let her leave it at that.

I let her continue eating—she was hungrier that I'd ever seen her, which meant she'd been lying when she'd been almost passing out last night—until she started to poke at the food. She'd finished almost all of it, which made me wonder where she put it all.

I cocked my head and she looked up to me.

"How?"

I took a moment to compose my thoughts, and told her. I did my best not to name names, and I left out most of the details on the Existences and the old reality with the Witches.

I expected Kyoko, cynic that she was, to interrupt me, but no, she just sat and listened. Her expression didn't change.

Well, until her mouth drew into a crooked grin. "I swear, say 'phenomenal cosmic power' one more time and I'll belt you."

We laughed, which seemed to shake a little of the bewilderment out of her. Not all of it of course, since my little story was a lot to take in all at once.

Kyoko's half-grin faded. "Next question," she said, pointing her chin at the food, and then turning to jab a finger at the blankets. "Why?"

I popped the last piece of toast into my mouth, trying to hide my apprehension. I'd sat up for a while last night, somehow knowing Kyoko would be asking this. I'd wondered if I should make something up, some reason or excuse that she would buy without much fuss.

I'd decided that lying just wasn't something I wanted to do. I'd decided that I had something to say that might hurt for a while, but ultimately was going to be for the best.

"I guess you could say it's payback."

Kyoko's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Well, the first time we ran into each other, you spanked me. Pretty easily, too."

She scrunched her nose. "You returned the favor. And you handed me my ass a lot worse than I did yours."

I shrugged. "It's the thought that counts, I guess."

"Yeah, but it ain't answering my question."

I nodded. "Remember the last time we were here?" I asked.

She just studied me for a few moments before answering, "Yeah."

I looked her square in the eyes. "You tried to be my friend. You tried to keep me from self-destructing."

"Yeah, and fat load of help that was," Kyoko spat. "Look, I've done this magical gig for two years and counting, Sayaka. If this is going to be a recap of my greatest failures, we could be here for a while."

I smiled thinly. "The point is you tried to help me. Tried to help me through a crisis, that, honestly, turned out to be pretty petty and stupid. But you genuinely opened yourself up to me to keep from doing something to myself. And I brushed you off, like a bitch."

She gave a humorless laugh. "Sayaka, my bitchiness beats your bitchiness. And I'm girl enough to be cool with it."

"If you admit that, why even try in the first place? You could've skipped along, let my stupid rookie self get killed, and that would've been the end of that."

"You _did_ get killed," Kyoko snapped. I could see anger in her eyes... and pain.

"Hey, I would've been dead either way," I said. "Why even try?"

She didn't say anything.

"You know what I think? I think your lone wolf, everyone-else-sucks facade is something you cooked up to make sure weren't going to be hurt again. You never wanted to wear that mask, but after what happened, you couldn't afford _not_ to."

Kyoko's jaw clenched, but she still kept silent.

"I also think you tried to take that mask off. To go back to the old Kyoko, the one that would love to help people, because of me. And then I performed suicide-by-magic. That hurt you. A lot."

The plate went flying as Kyoko batted it violently away. She rose to her feet, slamming a fist onto the altar hard enough to rattle it.

"Yeah, that's exactly right!" she snarled. "You were making the same mistake I made. I saw my life happening all over again, and _I wanted to stop it_!" She howled in anger, again striking the altar. "I saw another _me_. Spunky Selfless Sayaka, throwing away her wish on the violin boy. It was going to blow up in her face, and boom, then we'd have Kyoko 2.0."

"And you didn't anyone to be like you," I said quietly.

"I'm... I'm damaged goods," she spat, her lower lip quivering. "I had a family that loved me. I love my dad. I loved my mom. I loved my little sister to bits. And until I figured that He was full of crap, I loved God to." Her hands gripped the altar hard enough for me to hear it creak. "And you know what, by the end I hated them. I hated my family. I hated God. I hated e_veryone._ Of-Goddamned-_course_ I didn't want you to end up like me. I _suck_ as a human being."

She had started sobbing, and I gave her a few moments. By the time she back sat down and cupped her face in her hands, she was full on weeping.

After the spasms had subsided, she peered at me from between her fingers, eyes red and puffy with her pain.

"And then you died. And I figured that the mask I had on was the only thing keeping my Soul Gem from outright turning black and cracking. Go figure."

I smiled gently. "One more thing," I said softly. "I think you're lying."

I expected her to blow up at that accusation, but to my surprise she just kept hiding behind her hands.

"You don't hate you mom. You don't hate your dad, despite the pain he put you through. You don't hate your sister; you still love her to bits even if you can't hold her anymore. You don't hate God, even if the hand you got dealt didn't turn out to be all sparkles and sunshine. You just... pushed them away to shut out the pain."

Kyoko didn't respond to that, just lowered her head and obscured her face with her hair and hands.

I waited.

After ten minutes, Kyoko sat back up, lowering her hands. When I looked into her eyes, she looked more fragile and I had ever seen her before.

"Sometimes, whenever I was in the area, I would stop by here. When it was quiet and there weren't any Wraiths around. I'd sit in one of the pews and think. And pray. I asked God if he forgive me for all the lying, cheating, and stealing I'd done.

"I hated what my father did to my family and to me, but I still loved him. I hated this screwed up life, but I couldn't bring myself to hate God, either. I mean, He gave me a loving family even if He took them away again later. I even wanted to hate you at one point, too, for dying and making me doubt myself again. Then I remembered you're at least as hardheaded as me, so I decided that could make me forgive you." She shook her head. "And even if I've spilled my guts to you, you still didn't answer my question: why?"

I reached out the grasped her hand, squeezing it gently. "It hurt you a lot, didn't it? My death."

She snorted. "You think? Everything I've touched so far in my life, I've broken. The church, my dad, my family, and then you."

I suddenly recalled the events surrounding Kyousuke. "Happens to everyone," I said. I shook my head and answered her question. "You tried to be my friend. Tried so hard. And, after getting a new perspective on things, I learned that a friend can mean the universe. And when it gets down to it, friends should help friends."

I stood up and walked down the dais, extending my magic to touch upon the kicked-down main door and a handful of bolts from the Kaname Supplies. With a slight exertion of my will I levered the door back into place, holding it steady as I bolted it in.

"Sayaka, what're you—" Kyoko started to say. She cut off midsentence when she caught sight of the the building supplies lining the wall. "Where the hell did all _that_ come from?"

I grinned as I reached out to a bunch of wooden panels. I lined them up against one of the wall's many holes and started to drive nails into the wood. "It's complicated." I turned back to my task.

I heard footsteps as Kyoko walked down to me. "What're you doing?"

"I don't know if you're all completely reconciled with yourself, your family, God, and whatever," I told her. "But I'm guessing you'll probably be back here once in a while. Might as well make it so you don't have to shiver at night."

She didn't reply, just turned away. There might have been moisture glistening in her eyes, or it might've been a trick of the light. Knowing Kyoko, she'd insist on the latter.

"Sayaka," I heard Kyoko say to me.

"Hmm?"

"They're upside down."

I looked back to the paneling, tilting my head. I wrinkled my nose. "Drat."

* * *

Between phenomenal cosmic powers and a girl who finally seemed, if not completely at peace with the world, a lot less troubled, it took us until dusk to get the place looking presentable. I didn't have any idea of the layout of the place, but Kyoko knew where everything went, directing me as if she'd seen the place yesterday.

I think that said all that needed to be said about how Kyoko really felt about her dad and this church.

I dusted off my hands—I did actually physically lift some stuff here and there—and took a step back from the wall we'd just finished. The benches—pews, Kyoko had called them—were all repaired and arranged in neat rows and the holes in the wall had been boarded up and replastered. Kyoko had decided the upside down wood furnishing looked better, so we'd fitted them all that way.

The stained-glass windows surrounding the dais hadn't fared so well, since we hadn't had any stained-glass of our own to repair the damage with. We ended up just taking everything down and installing regular sheet glass. With the new panes attached, Kyoko called her spear out of her Soul Gem and started to etch on the glass. I assumed the images were Biblical or Christian or whatever, but I didn't want to bother her while she was concentrating by asking.

After half an hour—I'm pretty sure she was using magic to speed up the process of the etching, not that I really knew anything about it—she called the spear back into her Gem and looked over at me.

"Whaddya think?"

I had no idea what any of the decorations meant, but I guess from an artistic standpoint it looked pretty good. Hmm. Never thought Kyoko as the artistic type.

"I don't get the context or who's carved up there," I said, "but it looks very nice."

She nodded once to me before going back to studying the decorations.

"So," she said after a few moments, keeping her back to me, "as much as I'd like to think of myself as important enough to call you back from the dead, I'm assuming you're really here for something else."

Typical Kyoko. "Believe it or not, I really did want to talk to you." I paused for a beat. "But I'll admit, the repair thing was an afterthought after you fell asleep."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, let me rephrase. What _else_ do you gotta do?"

"Well, I was told to get in contact with you, Homura, Mami and the Inc—" I caught myself "—Kyubey. And just... sort of stick around in case anything happens."

Kyoko cocked and eyebrow at me. "Um... okay? Is there anything we should be worrying about?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I was originally planning on coming here to talk to you, but then she told me I might as well make the most out of the trip."

"All right," Kyoko said to me, then made a face. "Dammit, it's dark again, and I've been stuck here all day. I have to go out on patrol."

I held up a hand. "Tell you what, I'll take care of it. Take the night off."

She blinked. "And do what? Sit on my ass here?"

"You've got a lot to deal with, don't you?"

"I've been healed up since this morning."

"Not talking about that."

She pursed her lips. "Sayaka, I'm—"

"—Not going to worry." I crossed my arms over my chest. "And if you try to push this, I'll wrap you in like five shield bubbles. Even you won't get out of that."

Kyoko bristled.

Actually, I think Kyoko would eventually get out, considering I'd be distracted. And I wasn't even sure if I could form my defensive fields into restraints. If she really did push the issue, I'd have to give in to here, since I'd probably hurt her if I tried anything fancy.

But it looked like she wasn't going to. "Fine, whatever." She brushed past me and took a seat on one of the pews.

As I started to leave, I heard her call to me. "You couldn't _really_ have kept me trapped, could you?"

"Probably not."

"Ah, whatever. You waste your night then."

I snorted as I pushed open the door.

"Sayaka?"

"Yeah?" I said.

"Thanks. For the stuff you did for me today. All of it."

I stopped in place, turning to face Kyoko in the fading sunlight. Then figuring there could be a better way to end this conversation, I strode back to her and gave her a tight hug.

"What're friends for, right?"

* * *

I don't know what passed for quiet in Mitakihara nowadays, but I only had to deal with eleven Wraiths that night.

* * *

I dropped out of the sky in front of the Kyoko's church. I sensed that she was still inside, and asleep. It was just after dawn, so maybe if Kyoko was a late sleeper I could take a short nap. Not that it had been tiring or anything, but sleep was good for—

I felt their presence from a hundred meters off, closing fast.

I took a deep breath, raised my hands above my head, and slowly turned around.

A few paces from me was Mami Tomoe, with her Tiro Finale mega rifle braced on her shoulder. It was pointing right at my noggin, and it was close enough that the muzzle looked even bigger than I remembered. Homora Akemi stood next to her, holding a bow that looked like a Madoka's old one. She was being a little nicer; the burning pink arrow was only aimed at my heart.

The Incubator rode on Homura's shoulder, and the creature cocked its head as it stared at me.

I was certain I could take the two of them—or even the three of them, if the Incubator wanted to mix it up, too—but I'd already punched around one former comrade, and I kind of didn't want a repeat.

So I just smiled at them. "So... what's up guys?"

"An anomaly," the Incubator observed.

"That's impossible," Mami said simply.

Homura just shot me.


	9. Chapter 7: Conference

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**by ****Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 7: Conference**

* * *

Well, not really. She aimed the arrow over my right shoulder, which would have been a clean miss. Of course, if I let it go, it would make a really ugly scorch mark on the church door behind me. I'd spent a day rebuilding the place, damn it.

Purely on reflexes, I blurred my hand into the path of the arrow and caught it. It burned against my palm, but I was already extending my energy over my hand and the arrow. With a squeeze, I snuffed it out. I contemplated exaggeratedly waving my fingers and blowing on them, but that would just be corny.

Mami had jerked in surprise when Homura had loosed the arrow. Guess that hadn't been in their game plan. That was Homura for you.

"Uh... hello back at you," I said weakly to Homura.

Wordlessly, she moved the bow so that it wasn't quite pointed in my general direction. Mami kept her cannon trained on me. I could see the confusion in her eyes. Homura's, too, but that girl had a better poker face than Mami.

"Are you here because of her?" Homura asked me.

Three guesses who she was talking about. "Yes," I told her.

Homura nodded, and her weapon dissolved away into pink flames.

Mami frowned. "Homura, you remember what happened last time something that looked like Sayaka showed up."

The younger girl shook her head and slowly pushed the barrel of the giant rifle towards the ground. "It's not a Wraith masquerading as Sayaka. It's her, Mami."

"How can you be sure?"

I heard the door open behind me. "It's her, all right," Kyoko said. "Trust me." She strolled up next to me, hands thrust into her hoodie's pockets. She was close enough that if Mami fired, the blast from Tiro Finale would hit her, too. Probably what Kyoko was aiming for. The blonde and the redhead might not be on the bestest of best terms, but I don't think Mami would want to toast Kyoko, either.

I could easily block the shot, and even I didn't I wouldn't have a problem surviving it, but it was... nice to see Kyoko do that for me. Mami frowned at us, but with a snap of her fingers she reverted her gun back into its ribbon form.

"I will also confirm that this is somehow Sayaka. She has the same aura," the Incubator said from Homura's shoulder. Yuck. Its voice was exactly the same as I remember. I was able to notice, though, that it didn't have the same robotic monotone of the Incubators who'd been dropping asteroids on the planet.

"How she is here after sacrificing her energy to destroy those Wraiths is unknown to me," it continued. The creature's ears twitched. "Her magical aura is also several orders of magnitude stronger than what I remember it being. _Very_ powerful. Interesting."

It started walking towards me. I suddenly recalled the day I'd made the contract, and it had ripped my soul from my body. I jabbed out a finger at it.

"Nuh-uh, you're not coming near me."

The Incubater halted in its steps. It stared at me for a few heartbeats with its soulless pink eyes, then continued closer.

"Look," I said, tiredly, "I'm serious. I don't want you near me. Come another step closer and I'll turn you into a crater."

The creature ignored me.

I turned it into a crater.

* * *

We went inside Kyoko's church to talk. The Incubator would take a while to get one of its spare bodies, so I could give Homura and Mami a repeat of what I'd told Kyoko.

Mami, who'd never been inside the church, marveled at how beautiful it was. Kyoko didn't say anything about our repairing it, and I could see that she was pleased with Mami's opinions.

Good for her. I don't think I've seen Kyoko happy before.

I repeated my story to the two of them. Mami looked fascinated. Homura just looked like Homura.

When I was finished, Mami leaned against the wall. "It's so..."

"Crazy? Awesome? Magical?" I offered.

"Complex." Mami twisted one of her locks around her finger. "Sayaka, I'm so glad to see you alive and... strong. It's just that the story you told us is so—"

"Nuts?" interjected Kyoko.

"—Fantastic, that it's hard to digest. I don't doubt that you're telling the truth, but I'm going to need time, you see."

"It's all right," I told her. "If you or Kyoko came back from the dead, I'd think my world was changed, too."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Homura jerk her head up at my choice of words. Oh yeah, that girl definitely still remembered.

"But hey, it shouldn't take too long," Kyoko said. "I mean, it took me what, a day to get over it?"

A day and a lot of tears, but she'd—we'd—come out a lot better because of it.

Mami cocked her head in puzzlement. "A day?"

Kyoko looked sheepish. "Yeah, about that. Sayaka here showed up yesterday while you two were out of town. See, I was taking out this swarm of like thirty Wraiths, right, and just when I was about to kick their asses, Sayaka freaking falls out of the sky and wastes all of them..."

Silently, Homura moved away from the group, walking towards the opposite wall.

Mami seemed to be listening intently to Kyoko, so I followed her.

When we were out of earshot, Homura turned to me.

"How is she?" she asked.

I chuckled. "She's a nigh-omniscient, nigh-omnipotent Existence. She's doing great."

Homura looked relieved. "That's great to hear." Her face became pensive. "Now that she's become one of these, er, 'Existences', is she—"

"Any different?" I completed. "Well, yeah, of course she's different. Going from eighth grader to goddess is a pretty big change. She's just not different in any way that _matters._"

The set of Homura's shoulders changed, like I'd just taken a huge weight from her shoulders. "Thank goodness. If she lost herself to do what she did, for me, I'd..."

Homura didn't complete her sentence. Couldn't blame her. I've been choked up on emotion enough times to know what it was like.

I gave her a couple of moments, then asked, "How are _you_ doing, and the others?"

"I'm doing fine, and so is Mami. Kyoko seems in high spirits, so that answers that. Madoka's parents and brother are also doing well. Ms. Saotome's even managed to stay in a relationship for more than two days."

I snorted. "Good to hear. Madoka was worried, so she wanted me to check up on you guys. Although, now that I think about, she wouldn't have needed me to know for her to know, would she?"

Homura shrugged. "You're more acquainted with her powers than I am."

"Actually, you'd be surprised how clueless I am about her powers now. I mean—"

I frowned when I felt it. A bright, powerful aura coming in fast towards me. Much, much faster than Homura and Mami had. I tensed, instinctively prepping my magic. Whatever it was, it had enough power that I wasn't sure if I could protect...

Hey, wait a second.

Making a face, I started stomping towards the door.

"Sayaka?"

A minute later the aura came to a stop outside the church, and I opened the door before Janev could knock. He would've clocked me in the face, but I sent out a little burst of power to deflect his fist. The Xori'an—in human form, naturally—looked a little embarrassed that he'd almost knocked me and not the door.

"Yeah, what do you want?" I asked.

Now he looked hurt. "What, that's it? No 'Hey, Janev, how are you doing? I missed you so much that—' "

"Hey Janev, how are you doing?" I parroted. "I missed you so so much I almost forgot I was missing you."

"Ouch. That hurts me on a deep, deep level, Sayaka."

I rolled my eyes. "All right, all right. It's good to see you again Janev, really. What's up, though? Why are you here?"

His face grew serious. "We're needed. They're going to have a conference or something, and she asked me if I could get you."

They. She. The Existences, and Madoka.

"She could've just sent me a magical floating-head message, or something," I said with a snort.

"Yeah, I guess, but I think Keltev asked her to give me something to do. Get me out of the house."

"Sayaka? Who's that?" I heard Kyoko say from behind me. The three of them had followed me to the door while we'd been talking.

"His names Janev," I explained. "He's... like me, I guess."

"They have magical boys up there?" Mami asked in a confused voice. "I thought it didn't work like that."

I was going to make a quip about ferrets, but Janev had craned his neck over me. Not hard for him to do, given that he was a head taller.

"Oh, _hello_. I see before me a gorgeous blonde, a gorgeous brunette, and a gorgeous redhead. And, of course, Sayaka. Wow, ladies, am I in heaven? Because you all must to be ang—"

Annoyed, I crouched and threw a shoulder into the Xori'an's gut, causing him to gasp and double over. Despite the fact that was taller and heavier built than me, I easily lifted him over my shoulder.

"Urk. Is this really necessary?" He wriggled a bit.

"Oh, hell yes it's necessary," I breathed, adjusting my grip on him, one that had a firm hold but wasn't grabbing his butt. Um. Tail. Haunch. _Whatever_. "I thought Lord Night was kidding about you and girls." I twisted my body so that Janev had a clear view of the three other Puella Magi. "The blonde is Off Limits. Redhead's Not For You. Brunette goes by No Touching_._ Introductions _over."_

"Hey!" Janev protested. "I'd at least like their names!"

I sighed loudly, turning back to the three of them. "Sorry. Something's come up, and I've got to go."

"Oh. Er... all right," Mami said. She still looked flummoxed by the whole performance. Hell, they all were. "Are you..."

"I'll be back sometime. I hope so, at least." I caught Homura's eye. "I'll tell her you said hi."

She nodded to me gratefully.

"All right. I'll see you guys later."

I channeled my power over myself and Janev and launched myself into the sky. I turned back and saw all three of them—yes, including Homura—staring up at me, slack-jawed.

"But I just wanted their names!" Janev wailed.

* * *

"I'll have you know, I don't enjoy getting manhandled," Janev told me with an indignant sniff. I'd let him go after we'd cleared the atmosphere, and he was making a show of pulling his clothes—he'd come in human-style clothing—back into place.

"Well, you actually got girlhandled," I joked as I raise a hand before me, calling my surf tunnel portal into existence.

The Xori'an just grumbled.

The tunnel opened, and I turned to Janev.

"You know what this is going to be about?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Keltev didn't tell me much, and the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance didn't say anything. The only thing I could tell from them was that they seemed worried."

I frowned. "What worries an Existence?"

"I'd really not like to know."

We entered the portal, and the stars around us seemed to blur as we flew.

All the while I was thinking about what Janev had said. Honestly, what _could_ make an Existence uneasy? They are pretty much all-powerful right? Hmm. Maybe it wasn't themselves that they were worried about? Maybe—

"Don't bother worrying about it," Janev said to me. "I'm sure we'll get answers from them. In the meanwhile, just put it out of your mind. I don't think you'll be helping Lady Radiance much if you return as a nervous wreck."

Janev had a point. I doubt I could come up with the right answer, anyway.

We traveled on in silence for a couple of minutes. I started thinking about it again. Ugh.

"But anyway," I said casually. "Mami, Kyoko, and Homura."

"Uh, what?"

"Mami, Kyoko, and Homura," I repeated. "The _gorgeous_ blonde, redhead, and brunette. Remember? You wanted their names."

"Oh, right." The Xori'an thought for a moment. "Kyoko's your friend, right? The one you told me about?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm. Didn't seem the feisty type."

I snorted. "We had a real heart-to-heart yesterday," I told him. "She... My death affected her. Hard."

"That happens," Janev said softly. "Is she all right now?"

I thought about it. "When I died it was just a big... punctuation to to all the issues she was already having. But she's tough. I don't think she'll be quite the same again after yesterday, but it'll be a change for the better."

Janev didn't say anything for a few moments. Then, "Hmm. Tough on the outside, but with a soft center. I see some possibilities here."

I looked at him sidelong. "One, her inside's a _lot_ less chewier than you're probably hoping." Oh God, I couldn't believe I'd said that out loud. "Two, you're a terrible person."

He broke out laughing. "Everyone tells me that. But, to be honest, I do all this mostly out of habit."

I shot him a questioning look.

"Don't get me wrong. Back when I didn't consider jumping into vacuum without a spacesuit I loved the ladies. Nowadays, not so much."

I remembered how he'd said only the males of his species had been contracted by the Incubators. "Not much in the way of variety?"

"Well, yeah, there was that. It's mostly when you're a phenomenally cosmically powered guy like me, your perspective kind of changes. When your physical body can be changed with a thought, things like that soft throat fur, the nose with the right slope, ears with the right cant to them, they..." He cleared his throat apology. "Yeah, enough of that. Point is physical appearance isn't nearly as important as when I could turn on my trusty Ssree'ten charm. I needed something... deeper.

"I mean... take Mami, Kyoko, and Homura." I noticed he said their names without any mistakes, like he'd known them for forever. He really was terrible. "None of them would really do much for me, I think. Maybe it's because I don't know them, but I don't think our personalities would really click. And that doesn't take into account that they're all still mortals. They wouldn't understand, not in any real sense, what I am."

Not exactly the topic I wanted to explore—I was zero for one in the relationships department—but that's what I got for giving Janev their names. Made me almost want to think about whatever it was that was bothering Madoka and the other Existences.

"Well, what _would_ make you click?" I ventured.

The Xori'an looked thoughtful for a few moments. "In my perfect world, I'd find a girl with spunk. Enough heart for ten. Cares for people. Sticks close to her friends and never leaves them hanging. Has a sense of humor. Not perfect, but she'll pick herself up when she falls down. Knows how to throw down when she needs to. And lastly, she can't have blue hair. Damn, and I thought I was getting somewhere, too.

It took a moment for the words to register.

Had I just heard what I thought I'd heard?

I turned my head, slowly, to stare at the Xori'an. He kept on streaking down the tunnel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"Janev?" I murmured.

"Hmm. Maybe I'd have to rethink my criteria," Janev chortled. "Probably the hair thing. I mean, nobody's perfect." He turned to look at me, and his usual grin looked a little... shy.

I felt my cheeks heating up.

Then the tunnel ended.

* * *

With my cheeks still feeling a bit warmer than usual, Janev and I opened a transdimensional door and entered my home plane. I entered the pseudo-space and saw Madoka—in her Existence clothing—and the Lord Of Sunlight Night.

We bowed and took a knee. Almost before our knees hit the floor the both of them asked us to rise.

Without any warning, Madoka smiled at Janev. "Master Ssree'ten, you seem a bit distracted."

The Xori'an muttered something that I couldn't pick up.

"And Mistress Miki, your cheeks are pink," the Lord Of Sunlit Night noted. "Is that indicative of anything?"

"Keltev, you're the omniscient one," Janev said dryly. Lord Night just laughed.

I had to change the subject before my brain melted. Like, burned a hole through reality.

"So, Madoka, what's up. Janev said there was something major and you wanted me here."

My friend's smile faded. "There is, Sayaka. Something is disturbing me and the other Existences. Lord Night and I are going to meet the others and converse on the subject."

I nodded. "All right. I'm glad to be of any help, but, I mean, you're you and I'm just an ascended Puella Magi. What could I do?"

Madoka's smile returned. "Moral support."

With that she spread her arms wide, and pseudo-space rippled. With a start I realized that were back in the regular universe, far, far away from the entrance to our plane. Madoka had just _moved_ us here with a gesture.

Wherever it is we were, I couldn't see any stars. It wasn't completely empty, as I sensed the occasional comet and chunk of asteroid go tumbling by.

"This is the edge of the expanded universe," Lord Night explained. "We have moved so far that the light from the stars nearer the center simply hasn't reached us yet."

"What's out here, Lord Night?" I asked.

"We don't know," Madoka said.

Hmm. Maybe they were here to find out—

My eyes widened. Madoka didn't _know._ _Madoka_ didn't know.

That was way worthy of alarm bells. An omniscient being didn't _know_? That was scary. No, scratch that, it was beyond scary, like by a couple of light years.

They appeared without any warning.

The first alien was a huge rust-colored centipede-looking thing, over five meters long. The forward third of his body was upright, and it looked like his front was protected by jagged armor plates. Then I realized that the armor was his many forelegs, held up against his body. His head was shaped like a thorny dome, and sported three large eyes and some dangerous looking mandibles.

The second was a, I kid you not, a gold-scaled European-style dragon that was almost the size of a small city bus, with six legs and two pairs of giant wings. Her head was ringed by horns, and she was sporting teeth longer than my hand. Her whiplike tail swished as she peered at me with two sets of blood red eyes.

The last was... I can't really describe. Take the sun, and pretend it was made out of clay. If you took that sun clay and made something that combined an eagle, a jellyfish, and a scorpion, you'd almost have an idea what this being looked like.

Those were the second things I noticed, with the periphery part of my brain.

The first thing I noticed that I could see the infinite depths of space in the chinks and joints of the centipede's armor, see the million pinpoints of the stars between the dragons scales and underneath the shadows of her wings, and the very light and energy of the cosmos playing across and within the sun-bird.

The Lord Of Unsung Sorrow, the Lady Of Infinite Helix, and the Lord Of Fire Between. Three Existences far older than Lord Night and Lady Radiance, as much as age meant something to beings who weren't constrained by the timeline.

Three of them here. And I was treated to their awesome magnificence firsthand. I bowed deeply and went to one knee.

"It is good to meet you, Mistress Miki," Lord Sorrow said, voice echoing in my head.

"Indeed,"Lady Helix added.

"Welcome," Lord Fire finished. "Now, please rise."

"Rise," said Lord Sorrow.

"Rise," said Lady Helix.

I did so. Just like when I had first met Lord Night, I didn't feel the slightest bit weak despite their powerful presence.

I caught sight of the three of them... doing something to Madoka. They hadn't moved a centimeter, but I could somehow tell that they were greeting Madoka in a way that was so deep and so _fundamental_ that I wouldn't ever hope to understand it.

My friend, completely serene, without a trace of self-consciousness or nervousness, inclined her head slightly to the three other Existences. She was acknowledging their greeting and greeting them in turn, while at the same time asserting herself as their equal.

Hah, you tell them, Madoka.

I felt her smile, even though her face hadn't changed. Moral support.

What happened next I couldn't really describe. They were all—Lord Of Sunlit Night, Lord Of Unsung Sorrow, Lady Of Infinite Helix, Lord Of Fire Between, and Madoka—simultaneously so big it felt they were straining the very universe itself, and so small as to be impossible to comprehend. They were here and elsewhere, and everywhere. I had this hunch that even though I could see them in front of me—their avatars or forms or temporary bodies or whatever—they were also on a different plane altogether, conversing about something that my mind literally wouldn't have been able to wrap around.

I started when I felt Javen's paw—he was back to his ferret-looking form—gently touch my shoulder.

"It's very... odd when you see it for the first time," he told me. "If it makes you feel better, I went completely cross-eyed the first time they did their powwow thing." He patted my shoulder. "But pull yourself together. Company." He pointed.

Two other beings were coming our way. One was another of the Lord of Unsung Sorrow's original race, a large amber-colored bug, the second of the Lady Of Infinite Helix's, a bronze dragon.

"T!k!k," Janev said to the centipede. "It's been a while."

I blinked rapidly when I heard the name. T'i'k'i'k? Teeeekeeeek? I wasn't sure I could say that.

"It has, Janev," T!k!k said. "Glad to see that you are well." The centipede turned to me and rippled his armored forelegs. I knew it was an acknowledgment and gave him a respectful nod in return.

Janev half-bowed to the dragon. It didn't look like the natural thing we did to an Existence, but I could tell Janev deeply respected dragon-lady over there. "Mistress Rahkanael, it is a pleasure to see you again."

"The pleasure is all mine, Master Ssree'ten," Rahkanael said formally. She turned to me. "Greetings. You are the friend of the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance."

My, grandma-dragon, what big teeth you have.

"My name is Sayaka Miki," I said with a totally lame wave. "It's nice to meet you both."

Rahkanael shuffled her wings, and I got the impression that it was dragon version of a smile.

I smiled back. I got this feeling that if I'd been a regular girl—even a regular magical girl—the sight of T!k!k and Rahkanael would've sent me in the opposite direction, screaming. What had Janev said? Oh yeah. Perspective. It was all perspective.

If they wanted I was pretty sure they could hurt me—they seemed so much older than me they'd need a planet full of candles for their birthday cakes—but I was also sure that they weren't so different from me when it came down to it, physical form or not.

Hey, when you thought about it I could turn into a humongous bug myself if I chose to. Not that I was in any hurry to do that.

"I assume you don't know anything we don't," Janev volunteered.

T!k!k waved some arms, and Rahkanael's tail swished. Their equivalent of shaking their heads.

"The Existences are not always at liberty to reveal things to us," T!k!k said.

"Yeah, and don't I know it," Janev said with a sigh, flicking his ears. "I'm just worried, is all. I mean, if Keltev is worried..."

"I have faith in Zeendahl," Rahkanael said, "as well as all of the Existences."

The dragon must be referring to Lady Helix's original name.

"So do I. But I still have the right to worry, don't I?" Janev said with a snort.

"No need for that at this point in time, Master Ssree'ten," Madoka said from behind me. I spun around and arched and eyebrow at her.

"You know, Madoka, it wouldn't be hard to come to the front and say that."

She grinned. "But you have to remember, all the cool anime characters mysteriously appear behind someone else and say something amazing."

"What is anime?" I heard Rahkanael wonder.

"Some Earth thing, I think," I heard Janev explain.

"Must be a fascinating location," T!k!k observed.

"Are you done?" I asked. "You didn't guys didn't, uh, talk for long."

"We discussed all we needed to discuss," Madoka said, and her smile faded. Didn't like the look of that. "We'll go back home and talk there."

My friend turned to Janev. "Master Ssree'ten, the Lord Of Sunlit Night will be joining me for a time there, as well. You are, of course, welcome to come."

Janev shot me a look, and I, argh, I felt my cheeks get warm again.

"Thank you, Milady," The Xori'an said. "I wouldn't mind that at all."

Madoka smiled again as she nodded to Rahkanael and T!k!k. They gave her a centipede and dragon version of a deep bow.

"Let's go, Sayaka."

"Right behind y—"

And we were back home.


	10. Chapter 8: Secrets

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Secrets**

* * *

"I'll admit," I said to myself as I listlessly kicked a small space rock, "I'm terrified."

Two weeks had passed since Madoka and the other Existences had had their conference. She'd told me what the issue was, later, and it still gave me goosebumps.

Essentially, at that point in space, at a constantly changing point on the timeline, their (nigh) omniscience ended. It was just blank. They could virtually see into everywhere else _but_ there. Anything that could prevent someone as powerful as Madoka or the other Existences from viewing anything, much less a huge patch of space, was bad news on a scale that made my head spin.

Madoka had told me that the five Existences were exerting power over that area, keeping a close eye on it. If something happened, they would be there, instantly.

Worse, I'd been told something else. From that point of blankness, it was spreading. Their view of the universe was obscured—would be obscured? Gah, I don't know the right verb tenses when dealing with omniscience—and they were almost blind to everything. I could tell that it was distressing Madoka badly. I did my best to talk to her and give me my support, but she was in a bad way over it.

And, on top of that, Madoka had been able to tell me that, at the moment of blindness, Earth was somehow going to be pivotal to whatever was going to come. And we didn't even know _when—_when talking about the regular universe's timeline—whatever-it-was was going to happen. It kept on randomly shifting.

It just made everyone tense. I mean, there was always the chance that this event would bring cosmic sparkles and rainbows to the universe, but something told me that you didn't blinker an Existence if you were going to be doing something nice.

I wrinkled my nose. And I was getting paranoid. I was assuming that this blank event had some kind of purpose to it, some kind of intelligence. Maybe it was just a cosmic tummy ache.

Yeah, keep thinking like that, Sayaka.

I mean, I had faith in Madoka. I really trusted her to do the right thing and give it her all. But what if her best wasn't enough? What happened then? I put my hands behind my head and leaned back on the asteroid I'd been sitting on. I'd extended my power over it to keep it tumbling all over the place, so when I looked up it was like looking at the night sky back on Earth. You looked at the stars long enough and you could forget, for a little while at least, about the things that worried you.

I remembered telling Kyousuke those exact words, before I made the wish that healed him. The nurses had let me take him up to the roof, and for a little while, he had seemed at peace. For a little while. Then he'd snap back to reality and look at his crippled hand.

Well, this was steering towards bad places.

I reached into my pocket and fished out an iPod Quark, one of the newest MP3 player models back from Earth. Madoka had gotten one for me—I didn't even bother to ask how—a few days back. I plugged the earbuds in and absently tapped the touchscreen.

The shuffle brought me the flowing melody of Schubert's _Agnus Dei_. I just laid back, not thinking of anything other than the music, until Schubert ended and melded into one of Mozart's Concertos.

I'll admit it, I'd originally gotten into classical music because of Kyousuke. After a few months of listening to it, though, I'd grown to like it personally. It was just so... soulful. Peaceful. Serene. Better than all that rock and rap and pop. Ugh. K-pop.

Hmm. Kyousuke. I wondered how he was doing nowadays. I kind of made it a point not to check on him—I think I'd start suffering a nostalgia overload or something—but sometimes I did have to wonder how he and Hitomi turned out. I genuinely hoped it worked out all right. Yeah, true, Hitomi was one of my closest friends and Kyousuke was, well, Kyousuke, but even so I'd long given up on the resentment track. The Ocktavia affair kind of put me off the whole jealousy thing.

For some reason, I thought of Janev.

Forcefully, deliberately, I smacked my palm into my forehead.

Out of nowhere, I felt someone take a seat on the asteroid next to me. Even without looking, I knew who it was.

"You look like you need some company," Madoka said to me. She was dressed in her faux-school outfit. I looked a little more closely at her, and frowned.

"I'm not the one you should be worrying about," I said as I removed the earbuds and slipped the Quark into my pocket.

Madoka looked... beat. Nothing obvious, but I could see in her eyes, in the set of her shoulders, in the way her hands were clasped together, that she was exhausted. That worried me, both because Madoka was my friend whom I cared for and because she wasn't just plain old Madoka Kaname from Mitakihara, but also the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance.

"Are you all right?" I asked a second before I realized how dumb the question was.

She didn't answer me right away. I glanced at her and realized that she was really thinking hard about that question, which was scary when I thought about it for a bit.

"I'm... not sure," she said finally. I cocked my head, waiting for her to continue.

She smiled slightly. "I have to give the usual disclaimer," she said.

"That you can't explain everything to me. That some of the things you're experiencing are so beyond my comprehension that I simply wouldn't be able to understand them. I'm cool with that."

She nodded. "Well, I suppose I could start off with some good news. We've managed to prevent the blankness from spreading farther. It's not jumping around spatially or temporally anymore, but there's still a particular moment and a particular place where we can't... _know_."

I thought about that for a second. "Madoka, when you say 'we,' do you mean...?"

"Myself and other Existences, yes."

Whatever it was that was causing that blackout was strong enough that it took _five_ Existences to counter. No, not counter. If they were in similar shape as Madoka, it was _straining_ them.

"I also can't be completely sure," Madoka continued, looking troubled at that statement, "but I think Earth is going to play a major part in whatever is coming."

"How do you figure?"

"Do you know what sets me apart from the other Existences?"

"Um... you weren't a giant bug or a ferret or dragon or... or whatever the Lord Of Fire Between used to be?"

Madoka giggled. "Well, I guess that's the obvious answer." Her smile faded. "The reason I'm thinking of, though, is that there are still humans around. There's still Earth."

Huh? My brow furrowed as I looked to Madoka in confusion. "I don't understand."

She looked away. "No one has volunteered the information to you," said said, her voice sad. "It's not pleasant."

I looked down at the ground. Well, the asteroid I was sitting on. "From the sound of things, I didn't think it would be."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Madoka nod. "The species of the Lord Of Fire Between were powerful energy beings who were old before the Incubators even came into existence. There were never many of them, and the sheer numbers of the Incubators was too much. All but a handful were wiped out, and soon the Incubators were closing in on the survivors, too.

"They sacrificed themselves, transferring their life energy to the youngest of them. With that energy, the last remnant... well, you can guess."

"He rewrote the universe," I said. I turned to Madoka. "But what was it that made the Incubators go after them? And what did his wish alter?"

My friend shook her head. "That's something I can't tell." Not can't as she didn't know, but can't as in literally couldn't. "You would have to ask Lord Fire."

One of these days, maybe I would. "What about Lady Helix and Lord Sorrow?"

"Similar stories, with the addition that the Incubators were now fulfilling wishes. They asked for a wish that contradicted the established laws of the universe, and they had the innate power to fuel that wish."

"But it wasn't all a happy ending was it?" I asked, getting a sinking feeling.

She shook her head. "Their fate is similar to what happened to Master Ssree'ten's people. They were not efficient enough for the new system and were targeted for elimination. They eventually died out."

I recalled what Janev had told me a while back, and frowned. "Janev told me that his planet was destroyed, but his people were able to escape the Incubators."

Madoka shook her head. "Only a relative handful were able to flee the destruction of their planet. Even if more of them had escaped, it wouldn't have changed anything. Through illness, disaster, and war, their time as a extant people eventually came to an end."

"And the Lord Of Sunlit Night didn't care?"

"He cared very deeply for what happened," Madoka said sadly. "Yet, it wasn't his place to affect what became of the Xori'ans."

I looked away. His entire species, gone? And he'd never told me... heck, he'd made it sound like everyone got away. I don't know why he didn't tell me the full story—even if didn't exactly lie or anything—but I'd save that question for when I saw him again.

Yeah. But that was for later. My friend still hadn't told me what was so important about Earth.

"How does this connect with Earth?" I asked, turning to face Madoka.

"Because Earth still exists, and the Incubators still view the magical girls as useful to the current system. Humanity is in no immediate danger of extinction."

And that, maybe, was the trigger for all of this? But why? I mean, just humans. Not to be mean to the average person or anything, but what could _they_ do?

"That's something I'm actually I'm not sure of myself," Madoka admitted to me, reading my mental questions. "The blankness is concealing that from me, as well. Which brings me to a favor I have to ask."

I chuckled. "You know, you really don't need to ask me. You know I'm here for you, Madoka."

She smiled. "Well, I think I'll need you back at Earth for the time being. We don't know what's going to happen, but we're thinking it's coming soon. I just want someone, you know. I'll be asking any of the other girls if they'd like to go back, as well. I'm fairly sure Joan and Charlotte will be going."

Not alone? Sweet. "That's good, then. When do you need me to go?"

"As soon as you can."

"Gotcha."

"Make sure to tell Homura I'm doing all right."

"Are you?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow as I remembered the exchange we had had a couple of minutes ago.

"Tired, but overall I'm doing okay. Nothing to worry about. At least not yet."

Qualifiers. Eek. "All right. I'll get ready, then," I said, releasing my energy and hopping off the rock. I almost darted away before I remembered something.

"Oh, and thanks, Madoka. For helping me out with Kyoko."

"It was not a problem."

"And not just with the church. When I was talking to her. I was saying all the right things, drawing all the right conclusions. You were helping me, weren't you?"

"Just making sure you could talk to Kyoko confidently, and that you used what you knew to convey what you wanted. That was all. It was all you."

I nodded in understanding.

"Oh, almost forgot, Sayaka."

"Yeah?"

"If you can get anyone else to come back with you to Earth, you have everyone's permission."

I blinked at the slightly odd word choice.

"Lord Night tells me Master Ssree'ten hasn't been to an interesting planet in a while."

Oh. Duh.

* * *

I wondered if I should knock. Or ignite spacedust into a massive fireball. You know, how exactly _did_ you ring a cosmic doorbell?

I was still wondering when a door appeared a few meters in front of me and opened. Janev stuck his head out. Hah.

"Oh, Sayaka."

"Hey, you," I said in way of greeting.

"Hey. What's up?"

I took a few steps closer. "A friend heard from a friend that a friend hadn't been sightseeing in a while."

"Er... okay?" Janev said as he tried to sort out the who's who of friends.

"Yeah, okay," I said, reaching through the door and planting a hand on the Xori'an's shoulder.

"Wait, Sayaka. What are you doing?"

"No arguing," I grunted as I dragged him out.


	11. Chapter 9: Meeting, Again

**_UNIVERSAL_**

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 9: Meeting, Again**

* * *

"Next time, why don't you try telling me what's going on, instead of getting me in headlock and flying across the galaxy?" Janev grumped.

"Because I didn't know what to expect if I'd asked," I answered with snort.

"You could have, I don't know, expected an _answer?_ Why must you abuse me?"

"Because it was funny," I said with a laugh.

"And you say _I_'_m_ the terrible person. Gah. Females. You're all nuts." Janev threw his hands up in exasperation.

Janev and I floated just inside Earth's atmosphere. We were using our magic to mask ourselves from radar, and we were high up enough that nothing could really see us. I guess a low-flying satellite or something might run into us, though. Hmm. Better not hang up here for too long.

I snuck a glance at Janev. He looked like he was studying the planet closely. I guess when he come to pick me up before Madoka's meeting he hadn't stopped for sightseeing.

"How's it look?" I asked with a grin.

The Xori'an thought about that for a second. "It's a little wet."

I slowly turned to look him in the eye. "Say again?"

He snorted. "My planet had less liquid water than yours, since it was farther relatively from the local sun than Earth is. We had several moons, so tidal forces tended to pull the water to the poles, which then froze. We did have small seas here and there, sure, but in a narrow band around the equator. Back where I lived it was mostly tundras with some nice forests at the border of the temperate zone. The inner equatorial was too rainy for me." He turned away to gaze back at the planet. "But even with all the differences and hideous overabundance of water, it looks like a nice place. It's just sad that you live on an island. Surrounded by water. Ugh."

Even though he was trying to his useful cheerful, casual self, I detected a slight shift in his voice as he reminisced about his planet. Just a touch of sadness.

I took a half step closer to him, so that our arms almost touched. I laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," I said softly.

"Yeah?" he asked, and I could hear a little apprehension in his voice.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked gently. "About your people?"

Janev didn't say anything for a few moments.

Without looking at me, he said, "You had your own things to think about, being a newbie to the whole phenomenal cosmic power gig."

"What, you think I can't multitask?"

He thought about that for a moment. "You know, I have a feeling a yes _or_ a no answer will end badly for me."

"And you're trying to distract me," I said.

The guy didn't respond for a few moments. He looked down at the hand on his shoulder, staring at it for a few moments, before turning to look back at Earth again.

"It's been a while since the last of the Xori'ans died out," Janev said finally. "I've gotten over what happened. Even with beings like Keltev and Lady Radiance around, the universe isn't a happy and fuzzy place. I realize that."

"You didn't sound too over it just then."

The Xori'an grimaced. "I don't need your pity, Sayaka."

That hurt a little. Both because he'd think that I'd automatically enter pity mode—which itself implied that I didn't know Janev well enough to know not to do that—and that any notional pity wouldn't be welcome. I couldn't think of anything to say in response, so I just floated next to him, a hand on his shoulder.

I saw Janev visibly wince. "Sorry. That was unkind."

I didn't say anything for a moment or two. "Yeah kinda was," I agreed. "But you know what? I shouldn't be poking at something like that if you're not up to talking about it. So I'm sorry, too."

"S'all right," I heard Janev say.

"But really now," I said gently. "I know I've got my own things to get familiar with, but I think I have enough spare time to, you know, listen." I squeezed his shoulder little. "And we've only known each other for a couple of months, but I'd like to think that we're... um... close. I'd like to think you could talk to me about things that're bothering you."

I almost jumped out of the atmosphere when I felt Janev's hand reach up to grip mine.

"All right. Me and you, we'll talk about this sometime, hopefully sooner rather than later." I felt the hand gripping mine gently squeeze my fingers. I almost jumped again. "I care for you too, you know."

I was suddenly glad we were so high up, where the air was so thin as to be nonexistent, since the heat from my cheeks would have freaking ignited something. The small, small part of me that suddenly didn't feel awkward—and maybe a teeny bit, don't know, _happy—_noticed that Janev's face had reddened ever so slightly, and he had that almost shy expression I remembered from a few months back.

Gah.

We both jerked our hands back at the same time and spent the next few seconds awkwardly trying to figure out where to put them. I settled for putting them into my jumper's pockets, while Janev crossed his arms across his chest

Gah.

Aaawkward.

"It's, uh, this way," I said gesturing vaguely. My voice sounded kind of weird to my ears. Or mind, since it was this telepathy thing.

"Sure," Janev said, also a bit oddly. "Lead the way."

I shifted my power, letting myself plummet towards the ground in a guided fall. I locked my gaze on the Japan home islands and shifted my descent towards them.

I also told myself that the warmth I felt on my face was the heat of reentry, and had nothing to do with the conversation from a few moments ago.

Right.

Yup.

* * *

"So this is a temple?" Janev asked me.

"I think the correct term is church," I said. "Although, maybe the Christians call them temples. Synagogues? Dunno. Never asked."

The Xori'an shrugged. "Guess it's doesn't matter." Janev looked back to Kyoko's church (not temple). "I didn't get a chance to a good look at it last time. Pretty impressive."

"I'm going to take half the credit for that one," I said with a chuckle. "I mean, I was lugging two-by-fours all over the place." I knocked gently on the main door.

Nothing. Pursing my lips, I extended my magic outwards, trying to sense if anyone was home. Hmm. No one.

"Guess they're not here," I said to Janev, scratching my head. I should've checked before we touched down. Dummy. It wasn't like I'd been distracted and whatever. Blah.

"So, where to?" Janev asked.

I fished the Quark out of my pocket and checked the time. It was a couple of hours after school would have let out. "Two places I can think of: Homura's house or Mami's apartment." I tapped my head. "I'm betting Mami's. Homura's place is kind of weird to hang out at."

"Oh? Do tell."

"She's got some... really weird deco," I said, trying to think of a way to explain. Seriously, Homura had like a gazillion digital screens and a holographic razor-pendulum that gave the impression of a guillotine. And whatever wasn't a screen or furniture was stark white. "Really weird," I finished lamely.

Janev blinked. "Guess I'll take your word for it. I mean, you're human _and _female, which makes you double weird. And if _you _find it weird, it'd probably blow my , to the blonde's place?"

I totally resisted the urge to take a jab back at him. "Looks like it," I snorted. "Let's take a walk."

* * *

Janev was constantly looking around as we walked from Kyoko's church towards Mami's house.

"So, how does Mitakihara rate on the ferret scale?" I asked.

Janev had paused in front of of a shop advertising some of the newest video games—huh, _Soul Calibur_ _VIII_ had come out while I wasn't looking—but turned to look at me when I asked.

"Just like any Xori'an city, really," he said. "We were a little more advanced—we had stable intrasystem spaceflight—but all in all, it's the same from what I remember. People shopping, kids coming back from school, people on errands, everything." He wrinkled his nose. "You people do tend to build vertically too much, though."

"Huh, what?"

"Vertically, like you have a lot of floors. Xori'an architecture was more... spread out. Horizontal. And when we did need to expand vertically, it was downward."

"Ah, so you people were afraid of heights."

"No, not really. It was more..." Janev's voice trailed off when looked at me and saw my teasing grin. "Meanie."

"What, I'm just a weird human girl."

Janev sighed loudly.

I just grinned wider.

* * *

Turns out they were at Mami's apartment, all three of them. I made sure to sense them before Janev and I actually came up to the door.

I was trying to figure out a way to properly announce ourselves. Send a magical flare past the window? Might be too conspicuous. Telepathic call? Hmm. Could I still do that with regular magical girls? Maybe—

Janev knocked on the door.

"What?" he asked when looked at him sidelong.

I sighed crossing my arms over my chest as I waited for someone to open the door. It didn't take long. The door swung open to reveal Mami, still her in school uniform.

"Oh, good afternoon Sayaka," the blonde girl said after a moment. She turned to my traveling buddy. "And... Janet, was it?"

"Janev," The Xori'an corrected.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"No worries."

Mami turned back to me. "So, what brings you here, Sayaka. Is something the matter?"

Maybe. Then again, I'd rather not lead this off by freaking her out. And besides, I did genuinely want to see them. "Just wanted to stop by and say hi."

"Oh. Ah. Please, come in!"

We stepped inside, and Mami led us to her sitting room. Homura and Kyoko were sitting at that really cute triangular crystal table Mami had in the middle of the room. There was a a real yummy looking cake set on top of the table, and plates and silverware. From what I could see of the cake and Kyoko's plate, the redhead looked to have eaten two slices already. Hah. Typical Kyoko.

"Heya, Sayaka! Thought I heard you!" Kyoko jumped up and walked over to me, but slowed when she saw Janev trailing behind me. Without saying anything further, she moved past me, hands in her pockets, and started walking in a circle around Janev. She did a couple of revolutions, looking closely at the Xori'an.

"Um... hi?" Janev said weakly.

After the fourth walkaround Kyoko came over to stand next to me. "Not bad. I've seen worse."

I'd have replied, but my jaw had dropped open. Had Kyoko just said...?

"Er... thanks, I guess," Janev said with a small shrug.

"Between you and me," Kyoko continued, "I think the violin boy was a little cuter. Not by much, but Kyousuke seemed like more your type."

"It's not really between you and Sayaka if I can hear you too, you know," Janev commented dryly.

"Also," she went on, "I didn't know you liked older guys. They can be major trouble, you know. Just don't ask me why I know that."

Normally, I'd like to think I'd be able to make some kind of oblique joke about how Janev was actually a lot older than he looked, but I was too busy trying to figure out if I should be giggling or trying to melt into the floor.

Kyoko spun around to face Janev, taking a hand out of her pocket and extending it toward the Xori'an. "Kyoko Sakura. Pleased to meet'cha."

Janev didn't seem bothered by Kyoko's banter... at least not by much. His cheeks looked flushed. Still, he grinned widely and shook Kyoko's hand. "Janev Ssree'ten. Right back at you."

As Janev introduced—reintroduced?—himself to Homura and Mami, Kyoko sidled up to my and put her face close to my ear.

"So, like, are there more people like your boyfriend?" she whispered. "He have a brother? Cousin?"

"He's not my boyfriend!" I hissed. "Stop it!"

"But seriously," Kyoko continued as if I hadn't said a thing, "he's not bad looking at all, those are some really nice shoulders, and he's got personality. Are there more of them?"

"Kyoko, I swear I'll hit you."

With a chuckle, the redhead bounced away from me and back towards the table, where she plopped herself down in front of her cake-heavy plate. Grr. I was going to get her back one of these days. Somehow. Even though I had feeling that anything I tried would probably just bounce right off of Kyoko.

"Please, Sayaka, sit down."

With a start, I realized Mami had gotten two more plates and sets of silverware and placed them on the table while Kyoko had been messing with me. Janev beckoned me towards him, where there was a plate set next to his. We sat down on the floor and Mami served us a slice of cake.

We spent the next few moments making small talk. Catching up on things, stuff like that. Kyoko surprisingly did a lot of talking. She was talking about how the city was doing, little tidbits about her church, how...

Light bulb.

Kyoko was stalling.

The realization must have shown on my face because the three other girls exchanged looks with each other.

I set my fork down. "Okay, what aren't you telling me?" I asked slowly.

Nothing. I looked at Janev. From his expression, he had no idea what to make of this either. I opened my mouth to repeat my question, but Kyoko cut me off.

"I told you, it's her," the redhead said angrily. It wasn't directed at me though; she was talking to Mami and Homura.

"We never doubted that, Kyoko," Mami replied. "It's just—"

"That you don't trust her," my friend spat.

"It's not unreasonable," Homura said quietly. She looked at me. "We saw you die, Sayaka. I don't know what that could have done to you. Or why you could or would come back."

I felt a sudden flash of anger. "And you were there when Mad—_she_ did her thing, remember? Don't tell me you're going to start doubting her, after all she's done."

I regretted that as soon I said it. Trotting out Madoka's memory like that felt... awful. Especially using it to jab back at Homura like that.

Honestly, if you thought about it, I'd be worried if I were in their shoes. Comrade dies. Comrade suddenly without warning appears again, with enough magical mojo to make, like, Goku look like a wussy. Comrade then disappears again for weeks before mysteriously showing up again. Yeah, I'd be kind of wary under those circumstance as well. I recognized that.

It was just... I was surprised that Homura didn't have my back. Yeah, the two of us had never really been all that close, but both she and I were close friends of Madoka. I had hoped that would mean something, so the fact that I was wrong made me a little prickly.

Gah. Phenomenal cosmic powers and a dummy brain.

"I remember it perfectly well, Sayaka," Homura said, and I could hear the faintest touch of anger in her voice. "It's something I'll never forget." She looked down at her plate, and stared poking at the slice of cake with her fork. "I just don't know what to make of this, Sayaka. You say she asked you to come back here, but I can't confirm that."

"So you're calling her a liar now?" Kyoko snapped.

Homura looked at the redhead. "Kyoko, I've already lost two people I could call... friends. You and Mami are on the short list I have of people I could say I care about. I don't want something like what happened to Sayaka to happen to you two."

Kyoko opened her mouth to yell something, Mami opened her mouth to agree with Homura, and I opened my mouth to argue.

So yeah, wasn't expecting Janev.

"Ladies, can I point out something?" the Xori'an asked mildly.

We all stopped in mid breath, probably looking pretty silly. A random part of my attention noticed that Janev's plate was bare. Dang, that was fast.

No one said anything.

"Well, anyway, from the way Sayaka told it, she took down eleven of your Wraiths with less effort than it would take you all on your best days to kill two. Knowing what I know, I can safely say that she wasn't going anywhere near to her full power. Adding to that, I'll add that I'm equal to Sayaka in the magic department." The last part could have come out as a threat, but Janev, sounding more serious that I'd ever heard him, kept it as a simple statement of fact. "If Sayaka or I wanted to hurt you, we easily could have. We wouldn't even need to come into your house. We'd just have to drop from orbit and we'd turn this house into a crater." Janev scratched his chin. "Of course, we could be trying to do something, like corrupting the brave Puella Magi into evil, nefarious witches, but the universe doesn't work like that." Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the Xori'an had locked gazes with Homura.

A moment passed, and I saw the brunette nod slightly.

Mami visibly shook herself. "If I grant that you're not here to harm us, _why_ did you come back?"

I blinked before turning to Janev. Surprisingly—or, erm, not surprisingly—he was looking back at me, confused.

"Um, you or me?" he asked

I shrugged. "Me, I guess. Or... both?"

"That could work."

* * *

We had to give them the Cliff's Notes version. I glazed over exactly what the Existences were both because I don't think they'd really understand and because, heck, I didn't really get it completely myself. I made made sure that the three of them knew that the Existences were sensing something odd with the universe, and that Earth might be somehow pivotal to it all.

"How serious is this?" Mami asked.

"We don't know that," I said quietly. "_They_ don't know that, which kind of scares the heebie jeebies out of me."

Everyone at the table went silent.

"Do you know when... whatever it is is going to happen?" Homura asked me.

"We don't know," Janev answered for me. "Could be years from now, could be months, could be in the next few days."

We were letting that sink in when I felt something. It was... hard to describe. It just... felt wrong somehow. It was so awful the only word I could come up with to describe it was _wrong_.

The feeling was so obscenely strong that I jerked forward, knocking the table into Kyoko's and Mami's stomachs.

I turned to Janev, and by his posture and expression, I knew that he had felt the same thing.

"Or, it could be right now," I heard him whisper.


	12. Chapter 10: Nothing

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 10: Nothing**

* * *

Instantly, the Lord Of Fire Between, the Lady Of Infinite Helix, the Lord Of Unsung Sorrow, the Lord Of Sunlight Night, and the Lady Of Aspirant Radiance felt a tremble in the very fabric of the universe.

Instantly, they were there, at the edge of the known universe.

A rift had opened up in the void, yawning wide enough that one could lose entire galaxies within.

Except it was no rift.

Galaxy-spanning tendrils of wrongness came slithering from out of the maw, snaking towards the five beings who were interposing themselves between the mouth and the expanding universe that was inexorably moving towards it. The tentacles twitched as they sensed objects anathema to their metaphysical state, darting forward to strangle and destroy.

Instantly, they knew what horror they were facing.

This was no cosmic terror, not some whimsical Lovecraftian titan come to rend and shatter galaxies. It was a mere human mind that had dreamed up the myths of the Great Old Ones, and what threatened the universe now was so far beyond the ken of any mortal creature's comprehension that universe itself bucked and heaved at its wrongness.

It was not even something.

It was nothing.

Nothing.

It dwelt in the spaces between universes, feeding on the metaphysical reality of dimensions even as it tore them asunder with its touch. Yet, it was no destroyer, for destruction implies creation, a state of being. It was not annihilation, as things like antimatter are. Even the collision of particles and antiparticles still leave some ontological inertia behind in the form of raw energy.

What this entity touched was not obliterated. It simply ceased to be. Gone, forgotten. No, this thing which was not a thing was nothing. It Was Nothingness.

This creature of anti-existence heaved itself deeper into the universe, seeking to devour being into its anti-being. It wanted there to be only nothing.

The Lords and Ladies of the universe met it in battle. Their beings flared bright, more real than anything could ever be, and swirling tendrils of anti-being shattered as they met the adamant metaphysical presence of the Existences.

Lord Fire's blazing talons flashed and struck, Lady Helix's burning flames washed across the void, Lord Sorrow's claws ripped and tore, Lord Night's spear—a well remembered memory of his time as a mortal contractor—weaved forward to pierce and slash, and Lady Radiance's brilliant bow sent bolts of pure, blindingly bright metaphysical energy to obliterate with intrinsic realness.

As energy clashed something akin to a massive eye appeared within the maw. Like everything else about the entity, it bespoke of obscene wrongness. The organ was composed of impossible things, of dry water and round squares, of white blackness and loving hatred.

It turned to peer deep into the universe, focusing on a single, seemingly insignificant star.

As tangles of its tentacles were being burned away by the fury of the Existences, one tendril, thin and needle-sharp, stabbed into the universe with a violent shudder, disappearing into the void between realities. The appendage emerged near the fifth planet of the star, erasing it as it touched. Immediately, the being who was known as Madoka only to a select few sent an arrow of burning energy across the universe to wipe away the tentacle.

But not before the tendril disgorged a hundred thousand monstrosities that began to hump, slither, and lurch towards the third planet of the solar system with impossible swiftness.

A second bolt disintegrated three quarters of their number.

Before a third could be launched, the entity tearing its way into the universe lashed out with staggering fury, and the Existences were forced to turn their full attention—and power—to the creature that was forcing its way towards them.

Earth would be on its own.


	13. Chapter 11: Plans And Doubts

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By**

**Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 11: Plans And Doubts**

* * *

Every hair on my body stood on end. Eyes wide, I turned to Janev.

"Did you...?"

"Yeah. That can't be good, can it?" The Xori'an started to get up.

"What are you two talking about?" I heard Mami ask, confusion in her voice.

I turned to the blonde. "You didn't just... uh, feel something?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary, really," Homura answered. "Well, maybe a little uneasy, but that's because you two look spooked."

"I think that feeling came first," I heard Janev mutter. "Something's wrong. I think we're done here."

"What's going on?" Mami asked.

"Tell you when we find out!" I called as the two of us dashed out the front door.

I was promptly knocked over onto my butt as I slammed face first into something hard and completely unyielding. It would take a lot more than that to daze me, though, so I was immediately able to look up at what I'd run into. I was treated to the sight of a huge, bronze, six-legged, four-eyed dragon.

"Gah," I said brilliantly.

"Pardon us," T!k!k said from beside Rahkanael as the dragon took a few steps back. "We should have unhidden our auras before you got to the door."

"You guys can do that?" I said as I got back to my feet and dusted off my backside. Kind of a dumb question. They'd obviously done it, since I hadn't had a clue until I'd run smack into Rahkanael's chest.

"Takes a while to learn to do that," Janev answered. "I'm still not quite there yet."

"Trouble comes," the dragon said, breaking the mood. "We must prepare for battle."

"It's that thing Madoka and the others were worried about, isn't it?" I asked. "What's happening?"

"We can't comprehend the true scope of the danger," T!k!k buzzed. "I doubt anyone short of an Existence can truly understand it. But, from what little that I could make out, an entity from beyond our universe has breached into our continuity and is attempting to destroy it."

"Then let's get going," I said, though the moment the words left my mouth I wondered what the hell, exactly, I could do to help Madoka and the other Existences.

"That is their conflict," Rahkanael said. "Ours is to prevent the destruction of this planet. The entity—"

With a jerk, Rahkanael turned to look down at the door Janev and I had just run out of. Kyoko barreled out of the house before skidding to stop as she caught sight of T!k!k and Rahkanael.

"Sayaka, _what the hell are those_!?" Kyoko shrieked. There was a flash from her Soul Gem, and a heartbeat later Kyoko's clothing shifted to their magical form as she leveled her spear at the dragon and centipede. I felt the burn of two other magical auras within Mami's house, and a second later one of the windows exploded outwards as Mami and Homura shot through then, a shield erected to deflect the glass shards.

"Um..." I said lamely as a spear, two muskets, and an energy arrow were leveled at Rahkanael.

To her credit, Rahkanael didn't seem all that offended. She just stood completely still.

"Please, we are not enemies," the dragon said to the three other girls. Rahkanael swished her tail a little.

And before you could say "hair trigger", a spearhead, two musket blasts, and an energy arrow were sailing towards Rahkanael.

* * *

I wonder if I'd looked impressive or something when I'd caught and broken Homura's arrow all those weeks back. Because I don't think it looked nearly as cool as when Rahkanael flapped one of her wings and simply dispelled Mami's and Homura's attacks and blocked Kyoko's.

Even as the energy fizzled away, Mami had conjured up two fresh guns, Homura had nocked a new arrow, and Kyoko has retracted her flail back into a spear, ready to attack again. I slammed into the redhead and wrapped her in a bearhug. Kyoko struggled, but I didn't have any trouble pinning her arms.

"Kyoko, stop!" I yelled. "They're friends!"

"They're... they're...!" I heard my friend splutter.

"A giant centipede and a dragon. Yeah, I know! But come on, look! They're not trying to hurt us."

Rahkanael and T!k!k hadn't moved a centimeter from where they stood.

"See?"

After a few seconds, Kyoko stopped fighting, though she still seemed insanely tensed. I looked off to the side and saw Homura and Mami lowering their weapons, though they looked equal parts bewildered and frightened.

I tried putting myself in their shoes for a moment. Bus-sized dragon and bug the size of an economy car. Yeah, that could be kind of freaky if you didn't have my... expanded perspective.

"Hmm. Perhaps we should have taken human forms before we attempted to meet with you. An oversight on our part. Our apologies," T!k!k said."

Kyoko, Mami, and Homura just stared.

I released Kyoko. "Um, okay. Maybe we should make this quick before everyone freaks again."

"Indeed," Rahkanael said. The dragon's wings shifted a tiny bit. "As I was saying before, we must prevent the destruction of this planet. The entity unleashed a swarm of creatures, several hundred thousand strong, towards the planet."

"Hundred thousand?" I repeated.

"Yes. T!k!k's and my people will intercept the main enemy wave between the orbits of the fourth planet and this planet's moon. Master Srree'ten, your people will have to be responsible for stopping any that leak through and to maintain a distortion shift."

I saw the Xori'an scratch his head. "Yeah, sure, no pressure."

"And Sayaka," Rahkanael said to me, "you will have to lead the defense of the surface. The enemy will also attempt to kill any humans they can find, even through the distortion shift. This must also be prevented."

"Whoa! Wait!" I cried. " I'm not a leader or anything!"

"You are a very close friend of Lady Radiance," T!k!k said. "That actually does make you the leader."

"I'm _so_ not qualified for this!" I protested with a teeny tiny dash of panic. "This is a job for someone like... Joan!"

"There's nothing wrong with delegating," Rahkanael said. Suddenly, the dragon jerked her nose to the sky. "Humph. They're just about to clear the asteroid belt. We must go if we want to be in position to meet them." Rahkanael turned to me. "Good luck."

The dragon and centipede turned to face the sky. T!k!k waved his forearms and Rahkanael fluttered her wings and suddenly, with a bright flash, they were just gone.

"I've got to learn that one one of these days, too," I head Janev say.

Good luck, she said. Oh man.

* * *

"Is... whatever it is even half as bad as what the dragon and bug said it could be?" Kyoko asked me after a few moments.

"Probably twice as I bad," I said, feeling a little queasy. It was a new—well, kind of—sensation for me. I haven't had a stomach ache since the whole phenomenal cosmic powers thing.

Okay, enough. World to defend, world to defend. I could go into personal crisis mode after this. Of course, that was assuming I didn't screw this up completely and there was an afterwards.

Gah.

Rubbing my forehead, I turned to Janev. "Distortion shift?"

"It's like a Witch's Barrier, minus the screwiness," Janev said to me in a voice that wouldn't carry over to Kyoko and the others. "We sort of... shift reality sideways a tiny bit. It'll look just like the regular world, but people who aren't like us or who aren't magical contractors won't sense anything that's going to happen. Plus any property damage that occurs here won't leak into regular reality."

"So normal people are going to be safe?"

"Pretty much. Unless the enemy they were talking about can penetrate past the shift and drag people out."

I shuddered. Okay. Plan before things started moving too fast for me to keep track of. Um.

I closed my eyes, concentrated, focusing on an aura and a face.

"Um, Joan?"

"I'm about five thousand feet above you, Sayaka. Annie, Charlotte, and Cleopatra are with me. The rest of the girls are back up in space with the Xori'ans. Lady Radiance and Lord Night sent us out as soon as the trouble started. We have a basic idea of what's going on."

Speaking of too fast...

"Could you guys come down to where I am? I think we need to coordinate some things."

"On our way."

"Oh, wait, don't do anything flashy. My friends are freaked enough—"

There was a loud noise, like a sonic boom, followed by a rumble as something slammed into the ground behind me. Oh, and a small yelp from Mami and Kyoko.

I turned to face Joan, eyebrow cocked.

"Sorry, didn't let you finish," Joan said sheepishly.

The four of them were in their magical outfits. Joan was in full plate armor while Cleopatra had this bronze scale-like armor thing going on. Annie had a American West-looking leather—or was it called buckskin?—skirt and jacket, with matching hat and boots. Charlotte was sporting a colorful gown that didn't look too different, all things considered, from what Mami or Homura were wearing.

I also noticed that the younger French girl was pointedly avoiding looking at Mami, shame in her eyes.

Deal with it later.

"Okay," I said to the new arrivals, trying to get my brain in order. "Janev and his buddies are going to do something called a distortion shift. Don't ask me how it works."

"I don't really know how it works either, you know," I heard Janev whisper to me.

I resisted—barely—the urge to jab him in the ribs with my elbow.

"Anyway, for the most part normal people are going to be fine, as long as we can hold off the enemy." I craned my neck to glance at Janev. "Right?"

The Xori'an nodded.

"Right. The thing is, the shift isn't going to affect Puellae Magi. They're going to be confused and vulnerable when the attack starts. They'll be alone and in danger."

Joan looked like she knew where I was going with this. "I see. I'll try to coordinate people so we can get the ascended Puellae Magi spread out across the world. Hmm. I think Charlotte and I can get things settled across Europe. I'll see about the others."

"We'll need to make it fast," I told Joan. "Rahkanael and, um, Teekeek were in a rush."

"Don't worry, I'm used to battlefield urgency. We'll get things settled within the hour." Joan nodded to the Puellae Magi behind her. "We'd better get going." Annie, Charlotte, and Cleopatra nodded back.

There was a surge of magical power, and the four of them had rocketed off into the sky.

I turned to Janev. "How long before you guys can do the distortion thing? You'll need to do it before Joan starts moving. Y'know, it'll be weird when it starts raining magical girls and normal people see it."

The Xori'an nodded. "I'll go up into orbit in a second to get it established. Shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes." Janev wrinkled his nose. "I'll have to come back down after we get it going, though, just to make sure everything's all right."

"Uh, whatever you think's best," I said distractedly. I was too busy thinking about how I could mess this up.

* * *

To their credit, Mami, Homura, and Kyoko hadn't argued when I'd suggested they suit up and wait near Kyoko's church for... whatever was going to happen. Maybe they saw how discombobulated I was and wanted to give me some time and room. Or maybe they thought I was centimeters away from a psychotic nervous breakdown and didn't want to be at ground zero. God. I hope Koyko wasn't feeling the latter.

A few minutes after they'd gone, there had been a kind of... crackle in the air. Following that, the air seemed heavier and everything around me seemed to have shifted in color, like it had been lightly dusted over with pastel. Must be Janev's distortion shift.

Joan kept up a running telepathic commentary on her progress. There were enough ascended Puellae Magi to spread out across the globe and let the normal girls know what was going on. Joan even found some people from Japan, so I wouldn't have to do anything myself.

So I started feeling a little less panicked and a little more useless.

As the minutes ticked by, I felt an explosion of magical auras from somewhere far distant above me. Rahkanael's and T!k!k's people had clashed with the enemy. It put things in perspective that I felt their power even though they were past Mars.

I heard T!k!k buzz in my head. "We have halted the vast majority of the lesser entities," he told me. "However, most of the powerful ones slipped past us and are heading towards the planet. Be prepared."

Be prepared, he said. Oh man.


	14. Chapter 12: Impossibilities

_**UNIVERSAL**_

**By**

**Greg Wong**

* * *

**Chapter 12: Impossibilities**

* * *

"I'm coming down," Janev said to me telepathically half an hour later.

"Yeah," I replied distractedly. There was magical... pressure, and it was getting stronger. Like something was coming nearer.

I felt Janev's familiar aura descending from the sky. The Xori'an touched down, and I saw that he was again in the armor I'd seen him in the first time we'd met. This time around, he'd added what looked like lengths of chain that wound around his arms and what looked like heavy, clawed gauntlets.

"Just take short, shallow, panicked breaths, and everything will be fine," Janev said to me.

"You're not helping," I muttered.

"Sure I am. You just smiled."

He was right. It had made me grin a little.

The pressure grew stronger than ever. Above me, I felt a massive sure of magical power like the one I'd felt earlier. The Xori'ans had entered battle.

"You ready for this," Janev asked.

"Do I _look_ ready?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, no, not really. But hey, that makes two of us." He dropped his voice to a stage whisper and moved close to my ear. "Promise not to tell the brunette, blonde, or redhead, though. I have an image to maintain."

"But, oh, sure, be insecure around me," I said with a snort.

"Well, you already know I'm fine being around you, so do you even need to ask?" he said with a laugh.

His face was still close to my ear, so I just had to turn my head a little bit and tiptoe to kiss him.

Yes, you saw that right. I kissed Janev.

It wasn't anything like those romantic movies or those cute anime scenes where the wind blows, the cherry blossoms swirl, and birds start to sing. I kind of just smooshed his lips with mine. And I think our noses bumped. And I think our front teeth might have clicked. And it was only for like a second. Maybe two.

I broke away, took three big steps back, and pointedly did not look in Janev's direction.

"Sayaka? Did you just...?"

"Zip it!" I yelped. "Not a word!"

"Uh... I didn't imagine that, did I?"

Cheeks burning something fierce, I finally looked over at Janev. While he couldn't possibly be as red as I was feeling, he did look a little pinker around his ears.

"No, you didn't," I said tersely.

"Um, okay," Janev said. "Uh... we'lltalklater?"

"Yeahsuredefinitely."

Something slammed into the ground in front of us.

* * *

It was hideous.

Imagine a blob of snot, but black as ink, and the size of a truck. Now put about a dozen circular mouths on it, filled with jagged teeth and constantly snapping at the air. Add pseudopods—I think they're called pseudopods—and waving tendrils, and you have the creature that had dropped out of the sky and landed a few meters away from Janev and me.

I conjured my cutlass into my hand and dropped into a ready stance, blade facing the creature.

I was thinking of a way to attack something that looked like a ball of toothy goo, when I heard Janev moan, "No."

I'd never heard him like that before. Didn't think it was possible. I mean, it was Janev (who I'd just kissed like a minute ago butbetternotdwellonthatrightnow).

Skin covered in goosebumps, I said over my shoulder, "Janev, what is it?"

"That's a Devourer."

It took a heartbeat before it clicked. "But, they're—"

"Impossible," Janev finished. "They're conceptually _impossible_. That's what Keltev _made_ them."

My mouth went dry as I remembered one of my many talks with Madoka. It had included words like couldn't, can't, shouldn't, and impossible. A Devourer couldn't exist, because the Lord Of Sunlight Night had made that impossible. But here it was.

I shifted a bit, trying to get a look at Janev while still keeping the Devourer in my field of vision. The Xori'an was pale, and his eyes were wide with panic. Every few seconds he kind of flickered between his human form and his ferret body. This thing was completely freaking him out.

Okay, fine.

I dashed forward, aiming for a part on the creature that wasn't a mouth. My cutlass cut through easily, and I opened up a meter-long gash in the Devourer's side. As pale green slime poured out of the wound, it let out a piercing shriek.

Some goo tendrils shot out, wrapping out my sword arm. It was strong, and I was pretty sure if I had been a normal Puella Magi—or a magic ferret—this could've turned out badly for me.

Fortunately, I wasn't, so it wouldn't.

I flexed and pulled, ripping the pseudopods clean from the main blob. More green slime sprayed. I was preparing for another attack when a burning red meteorite crashed into the Devourer, flattening it into the ground.

Janev.

Without any effort that I could see, he was keeping the Devourer pinned to the asphalt with the fist he'd rammed into one of its mouths. The rest of the monster humped and squished around, angling its other mouths towards the Xori'an.

Janev growled, and with a surge of his energy he... well, he made it explode.

I erected a magical shield so bits of Devourer wouldn't get all over me and stuff. Really didn't want to to find out how hard it would be get out of my hair.

I looked over to him. "Are you okay?" I asked the Xori'an gently.

Janev rose from his crouch. "Yeah, I... I think so,"he replied. I noticed his voice was a little shaky. "I just... had a really bad experience with one of those things, and even after all that time the memory hasn't faded. Um. Are you all right?"

I dispersed the shield as the rain of snot ended. "Never better."

"Cool. Because, um... yeah," Janev said, looking towards the sky.

Thousands of shapes had appeared overhead, growing larger as they plummeted to earth.

* * *

More things came down from the sky. Some where Devourers. Some were bizarre reptilian things, or semi-spiders, or pyramids of black glass that moved on tentacle-legs. They were all terrible to look at, mostly because they were so bizarre and alien. Luckily, they weren't any more trouble to take care of than the Devourer.

The worst things were the ones I was familiar with.

One looked like what you'd get if you crossed a rose bush with a dragon, and given it butterfly wings. Rosebuds popped out along its face, giving it the appearance of having eyes. It was accompanied by swarms of two types of creatures, one of which looked a cotton ball on a toothpick while the other looked like an ice cream cone with wings and a disturbing number of eyes. Oh, and both kinds had mustaches.

I started trembling the moment I saw them. Like, completely shaking while I wondered if I had finally had my nervous breakdown and was hallucinating everything while I freaked out. I wondered if this was how Janev had felt when he'd seen the Devourer. If it was, I couldn't blame him for checking out for a few seconds.

Because what I was looking at was a Witch. The first one I'd ever laid eyes on, when Mami had challenged and destroyed it.

Witches had been erased from the entire universe, from past, present, and future, when Madoka had made the wish that gave her the power to save Puellae Magi when their Soul Gems blackened. It was pretty much a law of the universe that there would be no Witches, like how gravity made things go down and one plus one equaled two.

So how the _hell_ was there a Witch here?

I didn't realize I'd frozen up until the Witch was almost on top of me, swinging its head to slam it into me. Even with my speed, I wasn't going to avoid it. I just had to hope I could take the—

Hit?

The Witch's—Gertrud, that was its name—face stopped literally centimeters from mine. It strained to get closer, but no dice. That's when I saw the chains that had wrapped around its head, glowing like they were red hot. No, not _like_ they were red hot. They _were_ red hot, if the sizzling sound and smoke meant anything.

With a grunt, Janev hauled the Witch backwards, away from me. It screeched and strained to come at me again, but Janev didn't look impressed at all.

It happened fast. I was on top of Gertrud before I knew it, a cutlass clutched in each hand. I stabbed into the Witch's face, the momentum of my leap driving the creature to the ground. Even with two pieces of magical steel poking into its head the Witch still tried to squirm its way clear of me.

I settled the whole thing by wrenching my arms in opposite directions, slicing Gertrud's head into pieces. The Witch's body spasmed, relaxed, and began to evaporate.

I stared at the dissolving body. I'd met the girl who would have become Gertrud. Had I just...?

I heard Janev asking me something, but I didn't hear it. I was too busy desperately reaching out to Joan telepathically.

"Joan!" I shouted in my mind.

"Yes, Sayaka?" the Frenchwoman replied. She sounded tired.

"I just killed a... a..." I stammered.

"A Witch."

"I... yes." I swallowed. "Is she...?"

"I don't know. She's not with me," Joan said, grasping what I was trying to ask. "And I've not a clue _how_ these things are here in this reality, but I'm fairly sure killing them won't have any adverse effects on us."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, about five minutes ago I just destroyed the Witch I would have became." I felt the telepathic equivalent of a shudder pass through Joan. "And... and I'm still around, so I guess that means something."

I felt relief trickle through my stomach. I really didn't want the life of another Puella Magi on my hand.

I was—kind of—already responsible for Kyoko's death, in another timeline that could have existed.

"All right," I sent back to Joan, feeling my voice firm up a bit. "I'll, um, call if I need anything else. You take care."

"You be careful as well, Sayaka," Joan said back to me before I felt the connection break.

Breathing heavily, I noticed Janev had walked to me,moving around the bulk of the dissolving Witch. There was concern written all over his face. Again my mind flashed to the—incredibly freakingly massively awkward—kiss I'd planted on him.

Distracted much? Gosh.

"Well, I won't kill anyone I know if I destroy the Witches," I told him.

"That's good," he said. He looked up briefly at the sky, where black shapes still fell from towards the the ground. "Sayaka, listen. Me and you, we're more than powerful enough to take these creatures on by ourselves, even outnumbered. We should split up. We'll cover more ground that way, I think." I saw him hesitate for a bit, and again I saw the concern in his eyes.

"Probably," I said. My heart beat a little faster as I said it, and I realized that I was worried. What if Janev ran into something he couldn't handle? What if something happened to him. What if he...?

I felt arms wrap around me. Normally I'd have squawked and and jumped, but almost without thinking I hugged Janev back. I laid my head against his chest, feeling its reassuring warmth. I almost didn't notice his cheek laid against the top of my head.

"We've got a lot of things to talk about, you and I," he said to me softly.

I—regretfully—pushed away from him a bit so I could look up into his eyes. "Yeah, we do. So that means you and I are getting through this so we can do that talking, okay?"

"You bet," The Xori'an said, and I saw the familiar grin flash across his face. "You take care of yourself, Sayaka."

"And you had better come back in one piece, Janev," I said to him quietly.

And before our doubts and worries could give us second thoughts, Janev and I parted, flashing away to battle with the things that continued to fall from the sky.


End file.
